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Twenty five years ago this summer, Iraq provoked a crisis with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, demanding debt cancellation and higher oil prices. It proved to be a ruse for a far more daring plan. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. Around the world, people feared that Saddam Hussein’s armies would move on to Saudi Arabia. In response, President George H. W. Bush deployed hundreds of thousands of American troops to the Kingdom, recruited an international alliance to support them, and gained United Nations and U.S. congressional support to liberate Kuwait. The Gulf War fundamentally altered American policy toward the Middle East and laid the foundation for the many successes and failures that followed.

Today, Americans continue to wrestle with the legacy of the Gulf War and the dilemma that the Middle East has posed to U.S. foreign policy in the years since. On July 15, the Brookings Intelligence Project hosted Brookings Senior Fellows Kenneth Pollack and Bruce Riedel to reflect on the Kuwait crisis a quarter century later, looking back on 1990 and forward from 2015. They discussed this crucial turning point and its significance for the region and the United States. Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project, moderated the discussion.

Event Information

Twenty five years ago this summer, Iraq provoked a crisis with Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, demanding debt cancellation and higher oil prices. It proved to be a ruse for a far more daring plan. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. Around the world, people feared that Saddam Hussein’s armies would move on to Saudi Arabia. In response, President George H. W. Bush deployed hundreds of thousands of American troops to the Kingdom, recruited an international alliance to support them, and gained United Nations and U.S. congressional support to liberate Kuwait. The Gulf War fundamentally altered American policy toward the Middle East and laid the foundation for the many successes and failures that followed.

Today, Americans continue to wrestle with the legacy of the Gulf War and the dilemma that the Middle East has posed to U.S. foreign policy in the years since. On July 15, the Brookings Intelligence Project hosted Brookings Senior Fellows Kenneth Pollack and Bruce Riedel to reflect on the Kuwait crisis a quarter century later, looking back on 1990 and forward from 2015. They discussed this crucial turning point and its significance for the region and the United States. Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project, moderated the discussion.

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http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2015/07/09-pollack-iran-nuclear-agreement?rssid=pollackk{772F0728-DE05-43F9-854B-009D8A96970F}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/100120254/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~Regional-implications-of-a-nuclear-agreement-with-IranRegional implications of a nuclear agreement with Iran

Prepared testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Representatives, I am honored to be able to appear before you to discuss the implications of a possible nuclear agreement with Iran.

Obviously, at this moment in time, we do not have a nuclear deal and while it seems more likely than not that we will have one at some point this summer, it is certainly not a sure thing. Moreover, with any such agreement, the devil will be in the proverbial details and we simply do not know how such an agreement will treat key details such as the access rights of inspectors, the lifting of sanctions, and the process of reapplying sanctions (or other punitive action) if Iran is caught cheating on the terms of an accord. All of this makes me very wary of commenting on the advantages or disadvantages of a deal where so many key uncertainties remain.

More than that, I believe that the terms of such a deal are of less importance to America’s national interests than how the nations of the Middle East respond to it. Since the election of Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran, I have believed that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamene’i, concluded that he did not need an actual nuclear arsenal because he calculated that there was little likelihood of either an American or Israeli attack and perhaps that Iran was far enough along toward being able to build a nuclear weapon as it needed to be given that threat environment. I also believe that Rouhani’s election convinced him that relieving the pressure of the sanctions on Iran’s economy was a higher priority than making further progress toward fielding a nuclear arsenal—so long as Iran did not have to give up its nuclear capability entirely and forever in return for the lifting of sanctions. Based on this analysis, I suspect that the Iranian government does not intend to cheat on any nuclear agreement or to use it as a cover to covertly acquire nuclear weapons as North Korea did, at least not for now or for the foreseeable future.

Consequently, I plan to focus my remarks primarily on the regional impact of an Iranian nuclear agreement, both because I see that as the issue where such a deal could have the greatest impact on American interests, and where it developments could ultimately shape the implementation of the deal—including Iran’s willingness to abide by its terms.

Even here, the real questions are not those about regional proliferation which has dominated discussion of this matter to date, but about the civil and proxy wars currently roiling the Middle East, and the likely role of the United States in the region after a nuclear accord with Iran. It is those issues that are likely to determine whether a nuclear deal with Iran leads to greater stability or greater instability in the Middle East, and thus whether it ultimately benefits or undermines American national security.

Iran

It is important to begin any assessment of regional dynamics in the wake of an Iranian nuclear agreement by asking how Iran itself is likely to behave. As always, we need to be very humble about our ability to predict Iran’s future behavior. Iran has an opaque and convoluted political system, riven by factions and presided over by a Supreme Leader who has often made decisions by not making decisions or by splitting the Solomonic baby. Indeed, it seems most likely that following any nuclear deal there will be a debate in Tehran over Iranian foreign policy (as there always is) with moderates and reformists arguing for Iran to use the deal as the start of a larger process of re-opening to the world and even rapprochement with the United States, while various hardliners and conservatives argue that a deal makes such moves unnecessary and that instead Iran can and must redouble its efforts to export Khomeini’s revolution and drive the U.S. and its allies out of the Middle East altogether.

Based on his various statements over the years, it seems most likely that Khamene’i’s perspective on a nuclear deal is purely transactional. If he ultimately agrees to one, it seems likely that it will be solely to get the sanctions removed. Nothing more and nothing less. It seems unlikely he will countenance a wider rapprochement with the United States—whatever Foreign Minister Zarif and possibly President Rouhani may want.

Iran has always seemed to fashion discrete policies toward different states of the region. In each case, it has a certain set of interests in a country and engages in a policy debate over how to act toward that country—in which Iran’s complicated domestic politics interact with various strategic perspectives to produce a policy toward that country. Right now, Iran probably has a Syria policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Syria. It appears to have an Iraq policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Iraq. And the same for Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. Neither those interests nor those politics appear likely to change much, if at all, as a result of the nuclear deal. Instead, Iranian actions toward all of those places seem precisely calibrated to what Iran is trying to achieve there, and that is unlikely to be affected by the nuclear deal one way or the other.

It is also worth noting that, across the region, the Iranians seem pretty comfortable with the status quo. Their Shi’a allies are dominant in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. In Syria, the Asad regime is embattled and has suffered some setbacks, but it remains in power and Iran continues to commit its own resources and the troops of its Iraqi and Hizballah allies shore up the Alawi position there. Most reports indicate that the Iranians exert far greater control over Asad’s rump Syrian state than they ever have in the past, Iran may feel its position has improved in Damascus, even if Damascus’s control over Syria has taken a beating. Tehran may also feel it could be doing better in Bahrain, but of the countries in play in the region, that’s the only one Iran cares about where Tehran may not believe it is “winning.” So there is no particular reason to believe that Iran is looking to increase its aggressive involvement in any of these states but has been somehow constrained from doing so by the nuclear negotiations.

Moreover, while it is impossible to prove, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Khamene’i and the Iranian establishment believe they have has far more at stake in Iraq and possibly Lebanon than they do in a nuclear deal. They have poured resources into Iraq over the years, which is deeply bound up with Iranian society economically, socially and politically—as well as having constituted a dire security threat in the past. Likewise, Iran’s alliance with Hizballah is part of the bedrock of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, and brings Iran a coveted role in the events of the Levant. Because of Syria’s relationship to both Iraq and Lebanon, it too might be more important to Tehran than a nuclear deal if the Iranian leadership were ever forced to choose between the two. The point I am making here is simply that I cannot see Iran changing its policy in any of these countries because of a nuclear deal because I don’t think that Iran values a nuclear deal as much as it does its positions in these various countries.

In short, all other things being equal, it seems unlikely that Iranian policy toward the region will change merely as a result of a nuclear agreement with the P-5+1.

But all other things may not prove equal. It may be that Khamene’i will feel that a nuclear deal is a major concession to Rouhani and the Iranian Left, and so he may feel the need to demonstrate to the hardliners of the Iranian Right that a nuclear deal does not mean that Tehran has abandoned Khomeini’s ideology by giving up its enmity with the United States. If that is the case, Iran may ratchet up some of its anti-status quo activities in certain selected venues.

Israel is the obvious case in point: Iran may try to convince Hizballah, Hamas, PIJ and others to mount attacks on Israel. That’s almost a “freebie” for Iran. Israel is unlikely to retaliate directly against Iran, everyone will know that Tehran is behind the attacks, and since the Netanyahu government has managed to isolate Israel in ways that the Palestinians never could, Tehran will be playing to a popular cause. The problem here is that Iran may not be able to pull the trigger on such a campaign. Hizballah and Hamas are both extremely wary of picking a fight with Israel, as demonstrated by the fact that neither has done so in the face of multiple Israeli provocations. The events of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war has estranged Hamas from Iran, and tied Hizballah down in intense combat such that neither may be willing to heed a hypothetical Iranian call for new attacks on Israel. For their part, PIJ and other Palestinian proxy groups are weaker than in the past, and may have a hard time penetrating Israel’s ever more sophisticated defenses.

Bahrain is another possibility. Because Bahrain is a majority Shi’a state, whose people have been disenfranchised and oppressed by the regime—and their Saudi allies—it is another arena where Iran may be able to burnish its revolutionary credentials in a relatively popular international cause. But here too, there are limits. Some Bahraini Shi’a clearly accept aid from Iran, but the majority appear to prefer not to. They recognize that the more that they can be dismissed as Iranian agents the harder it is for them to get international pressure on the regime to reform. In addition, Bahrain is a very sensitive issue for the Saudis, and the Iranians have to worry that if they press on Bahrain, the Saudis might push back somewhere else where they are more vulnerable.

A last possibility is Yemen. Iran has few direct stakes in Yemen and their nominal allies, the Houthis, are dominant at the moment. So Iran has little to lose there and a powerful (relatively) ally. But once again, Iran’s ties to the Houthis have been exaggerated, and it is another very sensitive spot for the Saudis.

Consequently, it may prove difficult for Iran to make much mischief in any of these arenas— more difficult than it may be worth for them.

As this analysis suggests, I believe that Iran’s most likely course after a nuclear agreement will be to continue to pursue the same regional strategy it has pursued over the past three years. That strategy is inimical to the interests of the United States and its allies in many ways. However, there is a much greater danger: the danger that Iran will interpret American behavior after a nuclear agreement as a sign of further disengagement from the Middle East. If that is the case, it is highly likely that Iranian goals will become more expansive and its policy more aggressive as it believes that the U.S. will not be as willing (or able) to block Iranian moves. Thus, the most important variable in Iranian regional behavior after a deal may well prove to be the U.S. reaction, rather than anything derived from Iranian strategy or politics itself.

Israel

Let me now turn to the question of likely Israeli responses to a nuclear deal. I think it important to address the elephant in the living room first: it is highly unlikely that Israel will mount a military attack against Iran after a nuclear deal has been struck between Iran and the P-5+1. (Or in the run up to one). As I have laid out in greater detail elsewhere, Israel does not have a good military option against Iran for both military-technical and political reasons.[1] That’s why Israel has uncharacteristically abstained from a strike, despite repeated threats to do so since the late 1990s.

In this case, the political circumstances would be even worse. Consider the context: Iran will have just signed a deal with the United States and the other great powers agreeing to limits on its nuclear program, accepting more intrusive inspections than in the past, and reaffirming that it will not try to build a nuclear weapon. If the Israelis were to attack at that point, an already anti-Israeli international climate would almost certainly turn wholeheartedly against them.

That question is of more than academic interest to the Israelis. If Israel attacks Iran, there is a very real risk that Iran would respond by withdrawing from the deal, withdrawing from the NPT, evicting the inspectors and announcing that it will acquire nuclear weapons since its own conventional forces and the word of the international community were clearly inadequate to deter an unprovoked Israeli attack. The Iranians will doubtless also demand an end to the sanctions (and/or the imposition of sanctions on Israel), and if that is not forthcoming will set about busting the sanctions. And the problem for the Israelis is that in those circumstances, with the entire world furious at them for committing aggression and destroying a deal that most will see as having been the best way to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, there is likely to be very little will to preserve the sanctions on Iran. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Iran has a better chance to break out of the sanctions cage than this one.

Thus, an Israeli military strike in these circumstances would be unlikely to help prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and regaining its freedom of maneuver. It is more likely to ensure an Iranian nuclear weapon and jeopardize the international containment of Iran.

While this set of problems makes an Israeli military response unlikely, that doesn’t mean that Jerusalem will just roll over and accept the deal. First, I suspect that the Israelis will ramp up their covert campaign against Iran and its nuclear program. More Iranian scientists may get mysteriously assassinated in Tehran. More sensitive Iranian facilities might blow up. More computer viruses might plague Iranian networks. More money might find its way to Iranian democracy activists and ethnic minorities. Of course, even then, the Israelis may show some restraint: the Iranians are believed to have greatly improved their own cyberwar capabilities, and even a right-wing Israeli government might not want to provoke a harsh Iranian response that affected Israel’s civilian economy.

Second, I think it pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Israelis will also seek greatly expanded U.S. aid in response to a nuclear deal with Iran. In particular, it will look to improve its capability to strike Iranian targets, to defeat retaliatory missile and rocket attacks by Iran or its allies, and to ensure that Israel has a secure second-strike capability. More F-35s, greater funding for Israel’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile and Iron Dome anti-rocket systems, more capable bunker-busting munitions—these all seem like certain Israeli requests. But Jerusalem may well ask for other weapons and capabilities previously denied it, both because it may feel a strategic need for such enhanced capabilities and because it may believe that the U.S. will be more willing to provide them to secure Jerusalem’s (grudging) acquiescence to the deal.

Finally, a nuclear deal with Iran could push Israel to become more aggressive in its own neighborhood—or to take advantage of the situation to do so. The Israelis will doubtless argue that the deal has made them feel less safe, and therefore less willing to take risks on other security matters, particularly developments with the Palestinians, but potentially in Syria and Lebanon as well. (The Israelis are very comfortable with the Egyptian and Jordanian governments and are unlikely to take actions that would undermine them or diminish their cooperation with Israel.) For instance, in the wake of a nuclear deal, Israel may look to smash Hizballah and/or Hamas in Gaza again to convince them not to mount new attacks against Israel once their old Iranian allies (a strained relationship in the case of Hamas) begin coming out from under the sanctions and possibly flexing their muscles across the region.

It is worth noting that some Israelis may favor such actions out of a genuine belief that this is what is necessary to guarantee their security after what they will likely consider an imperfect Iran deal. Others may do so cynically, using their well-known unhappiness with a deal to justify doing a bunch of things that they believe that the U.S. and international communities would be loath to condone otherwise.

Saudi Arabia

Especially in light of these assessments of likely Iranian and Israeli behavior after a nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia is the real wild card we must consider. The Saudis aren’t exactly fans of a nuclear deal with Iran. And certainly, Saudi Arabia is the most likely candidate to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran were to do so. [2] In private, Saudi officials have repeatedly warned American officials (including this author) that if Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, Saudi Arabia will follow suit—and nothing will stop them—because they will not live in a world where Iran has a nuclear weapon and they do not. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi Intelligence Chief, has gone so far as to repeat that warning in public.[3] For instance, in 2011, Turki commented that, “It is in our interest that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, for its doing so would compel Saudi Arabia, whose foreign relations are now so fully measured and well assessed, to pursue policies that could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.”[4]

Yet the Saudis are often far more subtle and creative than others give them credit for. Even if Iran were to acquire an actual weapon or a near-term breakout capability, the Saudis might not simply take the obvious path forward and buy a nuclear weapon itself. There are many ways that the Saudis could take actions that would create ambiguity and make Iran (and others) wonder whether the Saudis had acquired a nuclear capability without declaring that the Kingdom had joined the nuclear club. Riyadh could build a nuclear plant of its own and begin to enrich uranium, perhaps even hiring large numbers of Pakistanis and other foreigners to do so very quickly, in almost exactly the same manner that the Iranians have proceeded. A favorite Israeli scenario is that one day, satellite imagery of Saudi Arabia suddenly reveals the presence of a half-dozen nuclear-capable Pakistani F-16s at a Saudi air base. Pakistan has long contributed military support, equipment and even whole formations to Saudi defense, so this would not be anything extraordinary. Everyone would wonder whether the F-16s had brought nuclear weapons with them and the Saudis could studiously avoid answering the question. The Iranians, and the whole world, would not know. There would be no proof that the Kingdom had acquired a nuclear weapon and therefore no particular basis to impose sanctions on Riyadh. Yet overnight, the Iranians would have to calculate that the Kingdom had acquired a nuclear weapon, but it would be very difficult for anyone to punish the Saudis because there would be no evidence that they had.

But all of that lies in the realm of hypotheticals inappropriate to the current context. If Iran signs a nuclear agreement, it will be publicly pledging not to acquire a nuclear weapon—and it will have the entire international community (except Israel) giving them the benefit of the doubt. In that context, we should not expect the Saudis to acquire a nuclear weapon of their own in response.

The Saudis have had good reasons for not acquiring one all of these years (and the Paks good reasons for not giving it to them). More than that, the optics would be all wrong for the Saudis. Iran will have just signed a deal with the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia and China agreeing never to build a nuclear weapon and accepting limits on its enrichment program to reassure the world that it won’t/can’t get a nuclear weapon. In that context, if Saudi Arabia goes out and buys a bomb from the Pakistanis, suddenly both Riyadh and Islamabad will become the international pariahs. All of the sympathy will swing to Iran, which will be seen as having behaved well, whereas there will be worldwide demands to sanction the Saudis (and Paks) for doing exactly what Iran had agreed not to. None of this makes sense for the Saudis and probably explains at least part of why Islamabad is already distancing itself from Riyadh on military matters.

That said, the Saudis may react in other ways. First, we should expect that soon after a nuclear deal with Iran, the Saudis will announce that they are going to build-up a nuclear program of their own to whatever levels Iran is allowed. So if, for instance, Iran is allowed to keep 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity, then the Saudis are likely to announce that they will acquire 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity. Doing so would be an important warning both to the Iranians (that the Saudis will match their nuclear capabilities at every step) and to the West (that they will have further proliferation in the Middle East if they do not force Iran to live up to its new commitments).

Second, the Saudis may choose to ramp up their support to various Sunni groups fighting Iran’s allies and proxies around the region. The Saudis seem to agree with the Iranians that Tehran is “winning” in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Syria is a more uncertain affair, but Iran’s allies are hardly defeated there and Iran is amping up its support for them. And the Saudis also seem to believe that Iran is making important inroads in Oman and with various Shi’a communities elsewhere in the Gulf. So while the Iranians may want to hold to a steady course, the Saudis may choose to double down, and they may choose to do so after a nuclear deal both to signal to the Iranians that they should not take advantage of it to inflict more damage on the “Sunni” side.

Unfortunately, there is a greater danger still. The Saudis and their Sunni Arab allies may fear that the U.S. intends to use a nuclear deal with Iran as a “Get Out of the Middle East Free” card. The Gulf states are convinced that is the Obama Administration’s intent. Across the board in private, Gulf officials damn the Administration for its weak response to Iran, brought to a head at the May 2015 summit at Camp David, where the claim that the United States offered nothing new as reassurance that Washington would push back on Iran. The danger here is that, far from accommodating Tehran as some have feared, the Gulf states are far more likely to get in Tehran’s face to try to deter the Iranians. The GCC air campaign in Yemen is a perfect example of this. It represents a stunning departure from past GCC practice—they never intervened directly with their own armed forces against another state, except behind a massive American force as in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

The ultimate problem is that the Gulf states are not strong enough to take on Iran alone, and if they act provocatively toward Iran, even if intended to deter Iranian aggression, they could easily provoke just such aggression and/or overstretch their own limited capabilities with potentially dire consequences for their own political stability. If the U.S. is not there to reassure the Gulf states and deter Iran, things could get very ugly.

The American Role

Inevitably with any question related to the geo-politics of the Middle East, the question eventually turns to the United States. The preceding analysis all points to the centrality of the American response to a nuclear agreement with Iran as potentially determining whether such a deal is beneficial or detrimental to regional stability, and thus to American interests themselves. As always, the United States is master of its own fate to a much greater extent than any country on earth, even in the turbulent and unpredictable Middle East.

Two points seem to stand out to me from the preceding analysis and the modern history of the region. The first is that while Iranian strategy is anti-American, anti-status quo, anti-Semitic, aggressive and expansionist, it is not reckless and typically quite wary of American power. When the U.S. exerts itself, the Iranians typically retreat. The exception that proves the rule was in Iraq in 2007, when initially the Iranians did not back down from their support to various anti-American Iraqi militias, only to have those militias crushed and driven from Iraq particularly during Operation Charge of the Knights and subsequent Iraqi-American campaigns along the lower Tigris. As we see in Iraq today, the Iranians apparently recognize that they misjudged both America’s will and its capacity to act then, and are once again content to battle Washington for political influence in Baghdad, but unwilling to challenge U.S. power militarily, even by proxy.

The second is the other side of the coin from the first. In the absence of American engagement, leadership and military involvement, the GCC states (led, as always, by the Saudis) become frightened and their tendency is to lash out and overextend themselves. Again, the unprecedented GCC air campaign in Yemen is a striking example of this. As the Gulf Arabs see it, they have never seen the United States so disengaged from the region—at least not in 35 years—and so they feel that they have had to take equally exceptional action to make up for it. I continue to see the GCC intervention in Yemen as a wholly unnecessary and unhelpful move, a rash decision meant to check what the GCC sees as a looming Iranian ”conquest” of Yemen. In private, GCC officials make no bones in saying that they felt compelled to do so because the United States was embracing Iran rather than deterring or defeating it. While all of that is a set of overstatements and exaggerations, it drives home the point that in the absence of a strong American role in pushing back on Iran, the GCC’s default mode is to attack on their own, and that only makes the situation worse, not better.

So, what the Obama Administration offered the Gulf states at Camp David failed to allay their fears or reassure them that the United States was ready to help them address their security concerns. That too is understandable: Washington did not offer a new defense pact or even an explicit nuclear umbrella—just more of the same. Some new weapons. Some new training. Nothing categorically different that was really likely to convince the Gulf states that the United States was making a qualitatively different commitment to Gulf security to ensure the region that a nuclear deal with Iran would not mean American abandonment of the region, let alone a shift toward Iran.

In truth, there is only one way that the United States is going to reassure the Gulf States that it does share their interests and is not going to leave the field open to the Iranians. Not coincidentally, it may be the only way to demonstrate to the Iranians that the U.S. is not abandoning the region—or too fearful of jeopardizing the nuclear agreement to block Iran’s continued aggressive activities around the Middle East. Indeed, it is probably what will prove necessary to force Iran to abandon its aggressively opportunistic regional policy. And that, is to pick a place and take the Iranians on.

Here there are three possibilities, but ultimately only one conclusion. Yemen is the wrong place for the United States to confront Iran. Yemen is simply not consequential enough to justify making any American investment there; in fact, Washington should be doing everything it can to help the Saudis and the GCC end their own intervention in Yemen, not reinforcing it. Iraq is also the wrong choice. The Iranians are too strong in Iraq now, Iraq is too important to Iran, the Iraqis have a chance of solving their problems and regaining stability, but theirs is a fragile polity, one that probably could not survive a U.S.-Iranian war on their territory. Both we and the Iranians need the Iraqis to sort out their problems, and Iraq will probably need both of our help to do so. Thus, Iraq is also the wrong place at the wrong time.

That leaves Syria. If the U.S. is going to push back on Iran in the aftermath of a nuclear deal, to demonstrate to both Tehran and our regional allies that we are not abandoning the field and allowing (or enabling) the Iranians to make greater gains, Syria is unquestionably the place to do it. Iran’s allies in Syria have been considerably weakened in recent months. Our Arab allies are eager to have the U.S. take the lead there, and President Obama has committed the U.S. to just such a course, even if his actions have fallen woefully short of his rhetoric. This is not the place to describe how the United States might mount such an effort, not the likelihood that it would succeed if the U.S. were willing to commit the necessary resources (which would likely include a heavier air campaign but not ground combat troops).[5] It is simply to point out that in the aftermath of an Iranian nuclear deal, finally executing the Administration’s proclaimed strategy for Syria, may be the best and only way to regain control over the dangerous confrontation escalating between Iran and America’s Arab allies.

Authors

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Representatives, I am honored to be able to appear before you to discuss the implications of a possible nuclear agreement with Iran.

Obviously, at this moment in time, we do not have a nuclear deal and while it seems more likely than not that we will have one at some point this summer, it is certainly not a sure thing. Moreover, with any such agreement, the devil will be in the proverbial details and we simply do not know how such an agreement will treat key details such as the access rights of inspectors, the lifting of sanctions, and the process of reapplying sanctions (or other punitive action) if Iran is caught cheating on the terms of an accord. All of this makes me very wary of commenting on the advantages or disadvantages of a deal where so many key uncertainties remain.

More than that, I believe that the terms of such a deal are of less importance to America’s national interests than how the nations of the Middle East respond to it. Since the election of Hassan Rouhani as President of Iran, I have believed that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah ‘Ali Khamene’i, concluded that he did not need an actual nuclear arsenal because he calculated that there was little likelihood of either an American or Israeli attack and perhaps that Iran was far enough along toward being able to build a nuclear weapon as it needed to be given that threat environment. I also believe that Rouhani’s election convinced him that relieving the pressure of the sanctions on Iran’s economy was a higher priority than making further progress toward fielding a nuclear arsenal—so long as Iran did not have to give up its nuclear capability entirely and forever in return for the lifting of sanctions. Based on this analysis, I suspect that the Iranian government does not intend to cheat on any nuclear agreement or to use it as a cover to covertly acquire nuclear weapons as North Korea did, at least not for now or for the foreseeable future.

Consequently, I plan to focus my remarks primarily on the regional impact of an Iranian nuclear agreement, both because I see that as the issue where such a deal could have the greatest impact on American interests, and where it developments could ultimately shape the implementation of the deal—including Iran’s willingness to abide by its terms.

Even here, the real questions are not those about regional proliferation which has dominated discussion of this matter to date, but about the civil and proxy wars currently roiling the Middle East, and the likely role of the United States in the region after a nuclear accord with Iran. It is those issues that are likely to determine whether a nuclear deal with Iran leads to greater stability or greater instability in the Middle East, and thus whether it ultimately benefits or undermines American national security.

Iran

It is important to begin any assessment of regional dynamics in the wake of an Iranian nuclear agreement by asking how Iran itself is likely to behave. As always, we need to be very humble about our ability to predict Iran’s future behavior. Iran has an opaque and convoluted political system, riven by factions and presided over by a Supreme Leader who has often made decisions by not making decisions or by splitting the Solomonic baby. Indeed, it seems most likely that following any nuclear deal there will be a debate in Tehran over Iranian foreign policy (as there always is) with moderates and reformists arguing for Iran to use the deal as the start of a larger process of re-opening to the world and even rapprochement with the United States, while various hardliners and conservatives argue that a deal makes such moves unnecessary and that instead Iran can and must redouble its efforts to export Khomeini’s revolution and drive the U.S. and its allies out of the Middle East altogether.

Based on his various statements over the years, it seems most likely that Khamene’i’s perspective on a nuclear deal is purely transactional. If he ultimately agrees to one, it seems likely that it will be solely to get the sanctions removed. Nothing more and nothing less. It seems unlikely he will countenance a wider rapprochement with the United States—whatever Foreign Minister Zarif and possibly President Rouhani may want.

Iran has always seemed to fashion discrete policies toward different states of the region. In each case, it has a certain set of interests in a country and engages in a policy debate over how to act toward that country—in which Iran’s complicated domestic politics interact with various strategic perspectives to produce a policy toward that country. Right now, Iran probably has a Syria policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Syria. It appears to have an Iraq policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Iraq. And the same for Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. Neither those interests nor those politics appear likely to change much, if at all, as a result of the nuclear deal. Instead, Iranian actions toward all of those places seem precisely calibrated to what Iran is trying to achieve there, and that is unlikely to be affected by the nuclear deal one way or the other.

It is also worth noting that, across the region, the Iranians seem pretty comfortable with the status quo. Their Shi’a allies are dominant in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. In Syria, the Asad regime is embattled and has suffered some setbacks, but it remains in power and Iran continues to commit its own resources and the troops of its Iraqi and Hizballah allies shore up the Alawi position there. Most reports indicate that the Iranians exert far greater control over Asad’s rump Syrian state than they ever have in the past, Iran may feel its position has improved in Damascus, even if Damascus’s control over Syria has taken a beating. Tehran may also feel it could be doing better in Bahrain, but of the countries in play in the region, that’s the only one Iran cares about where Tehran may not believe it is “winning.” So there is no particular reason to believe that Iran is looking to increase its aggressive involvement in any of these states but has been somehow constrained from doing so by the nuclear negotiations.

Moreover, while it is impossible to prove, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Khamene’i and the Iranian establishment believe they have has far more at stake in Iraq and possibly Lebanon than they do in a nuclear deal. They have poured resources into Iraq over the years, which is deeply bound up with Iranian society economically, socially and politically—as well as having constituted a dire security threat in the past. Likewise, Iran’s alliance with Hizballah is part of the bedrock of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy, and brings Iran a coveted role in the events of the Levant. Because of Syria’s relationship to both Iraq and Lebanon, it too might be more important to Tehran than a nuclear deal if the Iranian leadership were ever forced to choose between the two. The point I am making here is simply that I cannot see Iran changing its policy in any of these countries because of a nuclear deal because I don’t think that Iran values a nuclear deal as much as it does its positions in these various countries.

In short, all other things being equal, it seems unlikely that Iranian policy toward the region will change merely as a result of a nuclear agreement with the P-5+1.

But all other things may not prove equal. It may be that Khamene’i will feel that a nuclear deal is a major concession to Rouhani and the Iranian Left, and so he may feel the need to demonstrate to the hardliners of the Iranian Right that a nuclear deal does not mean that Tehran has abandoned Khomeini’s ideology by giving up its enmity with the United States. If that is the case, Iran may ratchet up some of its anti-status quo activities in certain selected venues.

Israel is the obvious case in point: Iran may try to convince Hizballah, Hamas, PIJ and others to mount attacks on Israel. That’s almost a “freebie” for Iran. Israel is unlikely to retaliate directly against Iran, everyone will know that Tehran is behind the attacks, and since the Netanyahu government has managed to isolate Israel in ways that the Palestinians never could, Tehran will be playing to a popular cause. The problem here is that Iran may not be able to pull the trigger on such a campaign. Hizballah and Hamas are both extremely wary of picking a fight with Israel, as demonstrated by the fact that neither has done so in the face of multiple Israeli provocations. The events of the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war has estranged Hamas from Iran, and tied Hizballah down in intense combat such that neither may be willing to heed a hypothetical Iranian call for new attacks on Israel. For their part, PIJ and other Palestinian proxy groups are weaker than in the past, and may have a hard time penetrating Israel’s ever more sophisticated defenses.

Bahrain is another possibility. Because Bahrain is a majority Shi’a state, whose people have been disenfranchised and oppressed by the regime—and their Saudi allies—it is another arena where Iran may be able to burnish its revolutionary credentials in a relatively popular international cause. But here too, there are limits. Some Bahraini Shi’a clearly accept aid from Iran, but the majority appear to prefer not to. They recognize that the more that they can be dismissed as Iranian agents the harder it is for them to get international pressure on the regime to reform. In addition, Bahrain is a very sensitive issue for the Saudis, and the Iranians have to worry that if they press on Bahrain, the Saudis might push back somewhere else where they are more vulnerable.

A last possibility is Yemen. Iran has few direct stakes in Yemen and their nominal allies, the Houthis, are dominant at the moment. So Iran has little to lose there and a powerful (relatively) ally. But once again, Iran’s ties to the Houthis have been exaggerated, and it is another very sensitive spot for the Saudis.

Consequently, it may prove difficult for Iran to make much mischief in any of these arenas— more difficult than it may be worth for them.

As this analysis suggests, I believe that Iran’s most likely course after a nuclear agreement will be to continue to pursue the same regional strategy it has pursued over the past three years. That strategy is inimical to the interests of the United States and its allies in many ways. However, there is a much greater danger: the danger that Iran will interpret American behavior after a nuclear agreement as a sign of further disengagement from the Middle East. If that is the case, it is highly likely that Iranian goals will become more expansive and its policy more aggressive as it believes that the U.S. will not be as willing (or able) to block Iranian moves. Thus, the most important variable in Iranian regional behavior after a deal may well prove to be the U.S. reaction, rather than anything derived from Iranian strategy or politics itself.

Israel

Let me now turn to the question of likely Israeli responses to a nuclear deal. I think it important to address the elephant in the living room first: it is highly unlikely that Israel will mount a military attack against Iran after a nuclear deal has been struck between Iran and the P-5+1. (Or in the run up to one). As I have laid out in greater detail elsewhere, Israel does not have a good military option against Iran for both military-technical and political reasons.[1] That’s why Israel has uncharacteristically abstained from a strike, despite repeated threats to do so since the late 1990s.

In this case, the political circumstances would be even worse. Consider the context: Iran will have just signed a deal with the United States and the other great powers agreeing to limits on its nuclear program, accepting more intrusive inspections than in the past, and reaffirming that it will not try to build a nuclear weapon. If the Israelis were to attack at that point, an already anti-Israeli international climate would almost certainly turn wholeheartedly against them.

That question is of more than academic interest to the Israelis. If Israel attacks Iran, there is a very real risk that Iran would respond by withdrawing from the deal, withdrawing from the NPT, evicting the inspectors and announcing that it will acquire nuclear weapons since its own conventional forces and the word of the international community were clearly inadequate to deter an unprovoked Israeli attack. The Iranians will doubtless also demand an end to the sanctions (and/or the imposition of sanctions on Israel), and if that is not forthcoming will set about busting the sanctions. And the problem for the Israelis is that in those circumstances, with the entire world furious at them for committing aggression and destroying a deal that most will see as having been the best way to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, there is likely to be very little will to preserve the sanctions on Iran. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Iran has a better chance to break out of the sanctions cage than this one.

Thus, an Israeli military strike in these circumstances would be unlikely to help prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and regaining its freedom of maneuver. It is more likely to ensure an Iranian nuclear weapon and jeopardize the international containment of Iran.

While this set of problems makes an Israeli military response unlikely, that doesn’t mean that Jerusalem will just roll over and accept the deal. First, I suspect that the Israelis will ramp up their covert campaign against Iran and its nuclear program. More Iranian scientists may get mysteriously assassinated in Tehran. More sensitive Iranian facilities might blow up. More computer viruses might plague Iranian networks. More money might find its way to Iranian democracy activists and ethnic minorities. Of course, even then, the Israelis may show some restraint: the Iranians are believed to have greatly improved their own cyberwar capabilities, and even a right-wing Israeli government might not want to provoke a harsh Iranian response that affected Israel’s civilian economy.

Second, I think it pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Israelis will also seek greatly expanded U.S. aid in response to a nuclear deal with Iran. In particular, it will look to improve its capability to strike Iranian targets, to defeat retaliatory missile and rocket attacks by Iran or its allies, and to ensure that Israel has a secure second-strike capability. More F-35s, greater funding for Israel’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile and Iron Dome anti-rocket systems, more capable bunker-busting munitions—these all seem like certain Israeli requests. But Jerusalem may well ask for other weapons and capabilities previously denied it, both because it may feel a strategic need for such enhanced capabilities and because it may believe that the U.S. will be more willing to provide them to secure Jerusalem’s (grudging) acquiescence to the deal.

Finally, a nuclear deal with Iran could push Israel to become more aggressive in its own neighborhood—or to take advantage of the situation to do so. The Israelis will doubtless argue that the deal has made them feel less safe, and therefore less willing to take risks on other security matters, particularly developments with the Palestinians, but potentially in Syria and Lebanon as well. (The Israelis are very comfortable with the Egyptian and Jordanian governments and are unlikely to take actions that would undermine them or diminish their cooperation with Israel.) For instance, in the wake of a nuclear deal, Israel may look to smash Hizballah and/or Hamas in Gaza again to convince them not to mount new attacks against Israel once their old Iranian allies (a strained relationship in the case of Hamas) begin coming out from under the sanctions and possibly flexing their muscles across the region.

It is worth noting that some Israelis may favor such actions out of a genuine belief that this is what is necessary to guarantee their security after what they will likely consider an imperfect Iran deal. Others may do so cynically, using their well-known unhappiness with a deal to justify doing a bunch of things that they believe that the U.S. and international communities would be loath to condone otherwise.

Saudi Arabia

Especially in light of these assessments of likely Iranian and Israeli behavior after a nuclear deal, Saudi Arabia is the real wild card we must consider. The Saudis aren’t exactly fans of a nuclear deal with Iran. And certainly, Saudi Arabia is the most likely candidate to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran were to do so. [2] In private, Saudi officials have repeatedly warned American officials (including this author) that if Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, Saudi Arabia will follow suit—and nothing will stop them—because they will not live in a world where Iran has a nuclear weapon and they do not. Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former Saudi Intelligence Chief, has gone so far as to repeat that warning in public.[3] For instance, in 2011, Turki commented that, “It is in our interest that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon, for its doing so would compel Saudi Arabia, whose foreign relations are now so fully measured and well assessed, to pursue policies that could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.”[4]

Yet the Saudis are often far more subtle and creative than others give them credit for. Even if Iran were to acquire an actual weapon or a near-term breakout capability, the Saudis might not simply take the obvious path forward and buy a nuclear weapon itself. There are many ways that the Saudis could take actions that would create ambiguity and make Iran (and others) wonder whether the Saudis had acquired a nuclear capability without declaring that the Kingdom had joined the nuclear club. Riyadh could build a nuclear plant of its own and begin to enrich uranium, perhaps even hiring large numbers of Pakistanis and other foreigners to do so very quickly, in almost exactly the same manner that the Iranians have proceeded. A favorite Israeli scenario is that one day, satellite imagery of Saudi Arabia suddenly reveals the presence of a half-dozen nuclear-capable Pakistani F-16s at a Saudi air base. Pakistan has long contributed military support, equipment and even whole formations to Saudi defense, so this would not be anything extraordinary. Everyone would wonder whether the F-16s had brought nuclear weapons with them and the Saudis could studiously avoid answering the question. The Iranians, and the whole world, would not know. There would be no proof that the Kingdom had acquired a nuclear weapon and therefore no particular basis to impose sanctions on Riyadh. Yet overnight, the Iranians would have to calculate that the Kingdom had acquired a nuclear weapon, but it would be very difficult for anyone to punish the Saudis because there would be no evidence that they had.

But all of that lies in the realm of hypotheticals inappropriate to the current context. If Iran signs a nuclear agreement, it will be publicly pledging not to acquire a nuclear weapon—and it will have the entire international community (except Israel) giving them the benefit of the doubt. In that context, we should not expect the Saudis to acquire a nuclear weapon of their own in response.

The Saudis have had good reasons for not acquiring one all of these years (and the Paks good reasons for not giving it to them). More than that, the optics would be all wrong for the Saudis. Iran will have just signed a deal with the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Russia and China agreeing never to build a nuclear weapon and accepting limits on its enrichment program to reassure the world that it won’t/can’t get a nuclear weapon. In that context, if Saudi Arabia goes out and buys a bomb from the Pakistanis, suddenly both Riyadh and Islamabad will become the international pariahs. All of the sympathy will swing to Iran, which will be seen as having behaved well, whereas there will be worldwide demands to sanction the Saudis (and Paks) for doing exactly what Iran had agreed not to. None of this makes sense for the Saudis and probably explains at least part of why Islamabad is already distancing itself from Riyadh on military matters.

That said, the Saudis may react in other ways. First, we should expect that soon after a nuclear deal with Iran, the Saudis will announce that they are going to build-up a nuclear program of their own to whatever levels Iran is allowed. So if, for instance, Iran is allowed to keep 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity, then the Saudis are likely to announce that they will acquire 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity. Doing so would be an important warning both to the Iranians (that the Saudis will match their nuclear capabilities at every step) and to the West (that they will have further proliferation in the Middle East if they do not force Iran to live up to its new commitments).

Second, the Saudis may choose to ramp up their support to various Sunni groups fighting Iran’s allies and proxies around the region. The Saudis seem to agree with the Iranians that Tehran is “winning” in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. Syria is a more uncertain affair, but Iran’s allies are hardly defeated there and Iran is amping up its support for them. And the Saudis also seem to believe that Iran is making important inroads in Oman and with various Shi’a communities elsewhere in the Gulf. So while the Iranians may want to hold to a steady course, the Saudis may choose to double down, and they may choose to do so after a nuclear deal both to signal to the Iranians that they should not take advantage of it to inflict more damage on the “Sunni” side.

Unfortunately, there is a greater danger still. The Saudis and their Sunni Arab allies may fear that the U.S. intends to use a nuclear deal with Iran as a “Get Out of the Middle East Free” card. The Gulf states are convinced that is the Obama Administration’s intent. Across the board in private, Gulf officials damn the Administration for its weak response to Iran, brought to a head at the May 2015 summit at Camp David, where the claim that the United States offered nothing new as reassurance that Washington would push back on Iran. The danger here is that, far from accommodating Tehran as some have feared, the Gulf states are far more likely to get in Tehran’s face to try to deter the Iranians. The GCC air campaign in Yemen is a perfect example of this. It represents a stunning departure from past GCC practice—they never intervened directly with their own armed forces against another state, except behind a massive American force as in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.

The ultimate problem is that the Gulf states are not strong enough to take on Iran alone, and if they act provocatively toward Iran, even if intended to deter Iranian aggression, they could easily provoke just such aggression and/or overstretch their own limited capabilities with potentially dire consequences for their own political stability. If the U.S. is not there to reassure the Gulf states and deter Iran, things could get very ugly.

The American Role

Inevitably with any question related to the geo-politics of the Middle East, the question eventually turns to the United States. The preceding analysis all points to the centrality of the American response to a nuclear agreement with Iran as potentially determining whether such a deal is beneficial or detrimental to regional stability, and thus to American interests themselves. As always, the United States is master of its own fate to a much greater extent than any country on earth, even in the turbulent and unpredictable Middle East.

Two points seem to stand out to me from the preceding analysis and the modern history of the region. The first is that while Iranian strategy is anti-American, anti-status quo, anti-Semitic, aggressive and expansionist, it is not reckless and typically quite wary of American power. When the U.S. exerts itself, the Iranians typically retreat. The exception that proves the rule was in Iraq in 2007, when initially the Iranians did not back down from their support to various anti-American Iraqi militias, only to have those militias crushed and driven from Iraq particularly during Operation Charge of the Knights and subsequent Iraqi-American campaigns along the lower Tigris. As we see in Iraq today, the Iranians apparently recognize that they misjudged both America’s will and its capacity to act then, and are once again content to battle Washington for political influence in Baghdad, but unwilling to challenge U.S. power militarily, even by proxy.

The second is the other side of the coin from the first. In the absence of American engagement, leadership and military involvement, the GCC states (led, as always, by the Saudis) become frightened and their tendency is to lash out and overextend themselves. Again, the unprecedented GCC air campaign in Yemen is a striking example of this. As the Gulf Arabs see it, they have never seen the United States so disengaged from the region—at least not in 35 years—and so they feel that they have had to take equally exceptional action to make up for it. I continue to see the GCC intervention in Yemen as a wholly unnecessary and unhelpful move, a rash decision meant to check what the GCC sees as a looming Iranian ”conquest” of Yemen. In private, GCC officials make no bones in saying that they felt compelled to do so because the United States was embracing Iran rather than deterring or defeating it. While all of that is a set of overstatements and exaggerations, it drives home the point that in the absence of a strong American role in pushing back on Iran, the GCC’s default mode is to attack on their own, and that only makes the situation worse, not better.

So, what the Obama Administration offered the Gulf states at Camp David failed to allay their fears or reassure them that the United States was ready to help them address their security concerns. That too is understandable: Washington did not offer a new defense pact or even an explicit nuclear umbrella—just more of the same. Some new weapons. Some new training. Nothing categorically different that was really likely to convince the Gulf states that the United States was making a qualitatively different commitment to Gulf security to ensure the region that a nuclear deal with Iran would not mean American abandonment of the region, let alone a shift toward Iran.

In truth, there is only one way that the United States is going to reassure the Gulf States that it does share their interests and is not going to leave the field open to the Iranians. Not coincidentally, it may be the only way to demonstrate to the Iranians that the U.S. is not abandoning the region—or too fearful of jeopardizing the nuclear agreement to block Iran’s continued aggressive activities around the Middle East. Indeed, it is probably what will prove necessary to force Iran to abandon its aggressively opportunistic regional policy. And that, is to pick a place and take the Iranians on.

Here there are three possibilities, but ultimately only one conclusion. Yemen is the wrong place for the United States to confront Iran. Yemen is simply not consequential enough to justify making any American investment there; in fact, Washington should be doing everything it can to help the Saudis and the GCC end their own intervention in Yemen, not reinforcing it. Iraq is also the wrong choice. The Iranians are too strong in Iraq now, Iraq is too important to Iran, the Iraqis have a chance of solving their problems and regaining stability, but theirs is a fragile polity, one that probably could not survive a U.S.-Iranian war on their territory. Both we and the Iranians need the Iraqis to sort out their problems, and Iraq will probably need both of our help to do so. Thus, Iraq is also the wrong place at the wrong time.

That leaves Syria. If the U.S. is going to push back on Iran in the aftermath of a nuclear deal, to demonstrate to both Tehran and our regional allies that we are not abandoning the field and allowing (or enabling) the Iranians to make greater gains, Syria is unquestionably the place to do it. Iran’s allies in Syria have been considerably weakened in recent months. Our Arab allies are eager to have the U.S. take the lead there, and President Obama has committed the U.S. to just such a course, even if his actions have fallen woefully short of his rhetoric. This is not the place to describe how the United States might mount such an effort, not the likelihood that it would succeed if the U.S. were willing to commit the necessary resources (which would likely include a heavier air campaign but not ground combat troops).[5] It is simply to point out that in the aftermath of an Iranian nuclear deal, finally executing the Administration’s proclaimed strategy for Syria, may be the best and only way to regain control over the dangerous confrontation escalating between Iran and America’s Arab allies.

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http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/07/09-regional-implications-iran-nuclear-deal?rssid=pollackk{CF7B515F-B36D-4A09-855C-D9837B16D8CC}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/100145400/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~How-a-nuclear-deal-with-Iran-could-change-the-Middle-EastHow a nuclear deal with Iran could change the Middle East

Earlier today, as the world waited in suspense to see if a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 would emerge from the talks in Vienna, I testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on what a nuclear deal with Iran could mean for a Middle East engulfed by chaos, sectarian tensions, and civil war. It is by no means certain whether the negotiators will be able to overcome the remaining obstacles and reach a final deal, but even if they do, we simply do not know how they will handle critical issues such as the lifting of sanctions, the access rights of inspectors, and the process of reapplying sanctions in the event that Iran is caught cheating.

This naturally makes me very wary of commenting on the advantages or disadvantages of a deal where so many key uncertainties remain. But what I can (and did) comment on is whether a nuclear deal with Iran is likely to lead to greater stability or greater instability in the Middle East and thus whether it will ultimately benefit or undermine American national security.

Watch the testimony:

Authors

Earlier today, as the world waited in suspense to see if a nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1 would emerge from the talks in Vienna, I testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on what a nuclear deal with Iran could mean for a Middle East engulfed by chaos, sectarian tensions, and civil war. It is by no means certain whether the negotiators will be able to overcome the remaining obstacles and reach a final deal, but even if they do, we simply do not know how they will handle critical issues such as the lifting of sanctions, the access rights of inspectors, and the process of reapplying sanctions in the event that Iran is caught cheating.

This naturally makes me very wary of commenting on the advantages or disadvantages of a deal where so many key uncertainties remain. But what I can (and did) comment on is whether a nuclear deal with Iran is likely to lead to greater stability or greater instability in the Middle East and thus whether it will ultimately benefit or undermine American national security.

Event Information

The Brookings Doha Center (BDC) hosted a panel discussion on June 3, 2015 regarding the future of U.S.-GCC security cooperation and the implications for the broader Middle East. The panelists were Ebtesam Al-Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center; Tamara Cofman Wittes, director and senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP); and Ken Pollack, senior fellow in CMEP. BDC Director Salman Shaikh moderated the event, which was attended by members of Qatar's diplomatic, academic, and media community.

Al-Ketbi opened the discussion by reflecting on U.S.-GCC relations in the wake of the May 13-14 Camp David Summit between President Obama and delegations from various GCC countries. In Al-Ketbi’s view, Gulf leaders were concerned that U.S. strategic priorities for the region “focus only on reaching a [nuclear] deal with Iran, while disregarding Iranian interventions.” She pointed to the role of Iran as a destabilizing factor in conflicts such as Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, while also pointing to the failure of the U.S. to take regional fears about Iran into account, particularly with regards to a potential Iranian role in Bahrain. Al-Ketbi spoke of the need for the United States to take a clear stance in solidarity with the Arab Gulf states – such as “extending its nuclear umbrella” or “signing a strategic partnership” – in order to assure these countries that it was not “turning over the security of the Gulf to Iran.”

While acknowledging Iran’s long-standing attempts to interfere in the Arab world, Wittes held that changing domestic contexts in Arab countries had created new opportunities for Iran to exploit. She noted that a nuclear deal with Iran would not be enough to “push back” Iran’s influence, but contended that an effective response must also address underlying concerns within Arab countries, such as local grievances and poor governance. With regards to the Camp David discussions, Wittes highlighted greater GCC unity on the issue of Syria as a key outcome, as well as coordinated GCC pressure on the United States to get more involved in Syria. Still, she noted, “This is also the place where the United States is most reluctant to get involved.”

Pollack underscored the Obama administration’s reluctance to take stronger action in Syria, saying that “The only thing consistent [about the administration’s policy] is the refusal to get involved.” While he stated that a nuclear deal with Iran would remove at least one destabilizing factor from the region for ten years, he pointed to the region’s ongoing civil wars – in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya – as a key challenge for U.S. policy in the region. Particularly on Syria, he held that the U.S. administration had not put forward any viable alternatives to the present cycle of violence. Creating better alternatives “is the role we’re supposed to play, and that’s where we’re failing,” he cautioned.

Both Al-Ketbi and Wittes highlighted greater GCC unity in facing regional issues, with all except Oman agreeing that Iran was at the top of the list of their security priorities. This only reinforced the gap between U.S. and Gulf visions for regional security priorities. Pollack pointed to the continued U.S. military presence in the Gulf – air force squadrons, naval forces, infantry brigades – as adequate to deter or defeat any “conventional threat” from Iran, but falling short of addressing Gulf fears of proxy conflicts or fomenting civil wars.

In discussing the sectarian nature of many of these civil conflicts, Al-Ketbi contended that the United States had failed to address this sectarianism despite the fact that “it was the invasion of Iraq that was the starting point of this sectarianism.” She contended that U.S. strategy for the region prioritized combatting various manifestations of terrorism, rather than addressing the root causes in various conflicts. She also held that “the United States does not concentrate on massacres committed by the Shia, only those committed by the Sunni.”

Discussion turned to the future of the American security role in the Gulf, with Wittes reminding the audience that the United States, though the strongest power, was not all-powerful. Though Al-Ketbi likewise conceded that the United States remained the top power in the region, she noted that “the GCC countries are diversifying their [strategic] relationships, perhaps because of the bitterness they feel [toward the United States].” Likewise, Pollack held that China and India would undoubtedly come to play a greater role in providing for Gulf security in the near future. “The question is whether they are going to be productive, responsible, constructive players, or destructive and divisive,” he said, arguing that the United States had a role to play in peacefully integrating rising powers into the existing Gulf security architecture.

In response to a question about potential GCC diplomatic engagement with Iran, Al-Ketbi maintained that attempts had been made at Track-II outreach to build trust between both sides. She maintained, though, that Iran had made it impossible for GCC actors to believe in promises made in either an official or an unofficial capacity. She also defended GCC support to the Egyptian government led by President al-Sisi, saying that “the GCC countries are not supporting Sisi, but Egypt and its stability, which are very important [to them.]”

Pollack and Wittes both responded to suggestions that U.S. policies toward the region were riddled with inconsistencies by suggesting that no great power’s foreign policy is ever fully internally consistent. “As long-time friends and allies, we should be able to recognize that we have differences,” said Pollack of U.S.-GCC relations. They both noted that the United States would have to find new ways to move forward on strategies regarding the region, but developing more inclusive approaches to resolving challenges such as arms proliferation in the Gulf and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Event Information

The Brookings Doha Center (BDC) hosted a panel discussion on June 3, 2015 regarding the future of U.S.-GCC security cooperation and the implications for the broader Middle East. The panelists were Ebtesam Al-Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center; Tamara Cofman Wittes, director and senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP); and Ken Pollack, senior fellow in CMEP. BDC Director Salman Shaikh moderated the event, which was attended by members of Qatar's diplomatic, academic, and media community.

Al-Ketbi opened the discussion by reflecting on U.S.-GCC relations in the wake of the May 13-14 Camp David Summit between President Obama and delegations from various GCC countries. In Al-Ketbi’s view, Gulf leaders were concerned that U.S. strategic priorities for the region “focus only on reaching a [nuclear] deal with Iran, while disregarding Iranian interventions.” She pointed to the role of Iran as a destabilizing factor in conflicts such as Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, while also pointing to the failure of the U.S. to take regional fears about Iran into account, particularly with regards to a potential Iranian role in Bahrain. Al-Ketbi spoke of the need for the United States to take a clear stance in solidarity with the Arab Gulf states – such as “extending its nuclear umbrella” or “signing a strategic partnership” – in order to assure these countries that it was not “turning over the security of the Gulf to Iran.”

While acknowledging Iran’s long-standing attempts to interfere in the Arab world, Wittes held that changing domestic contexts in Arab countries had created new opportunities for Iran to exploit. She noted that a nuclear deal with Iran would not be enough to “push back” Iran’s influence, but contended that an effective response must also address underlying concerns within Arab countries, such as local grievances and poor governance. With regards to the Camp David discussions, Wittes highlighted greater GCC unity on the issue of Syria as a key outcome, as well as coordinated GCC pressure on the United States to get more involved in Syria. Still, she noted, “This is also the place where the United States is most reluctant to get involved.”

Pollack underscored the Obama administration’s reluctance to take stronger action in Syria, saying that “The only thing consistent [about the administration’s policy] is the refusal to get involved.” While he stated that a nuclear deal with Iran would remove at least one destabilizing factor from the region for ten years, he pointed to the region’s ongoing civil wars – in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya – as a key challenge for U.S. policy in the region. Particularly on Syria, he held that the U.S. administration had not put forward any viable alternatives to the present cycle of violence. Creating better alternatives “is the role we’re supposed to play, and that’s where we’re failing,” he cautioned.

Both Al-Ketbi and Wittes highlighted greater GCC unity in facing regional issues, with all except Oman agreeing that Iran was at the top of the list of their security priorities. This only reinforced the gap between U.S. and Gulf visions for regional security priorities. Pollack pointed to the continued U.S. military presence in the Gulf – air force squadrons, naval forces, infantry brigades – as adequate to deter or defeat any “conventional threat” from Iran, but falling short of addressing Gulf fears of proxy conflicts or fomenting civil wars.

In discussing the sectarian nature of many of these civil conflicts, Al-Ketbi contended that the United States had failed to address this sectarianism despite the fact that “it was the invasion of Iraq that was the starting point of this sectarianism.” She contended that U.S. strategy for the region prioritized combatting various manifestations of terrorism, rather than addressing the root causes in various conflicts. She also held that “the United States does not concentrate on massacres committed by the Shia, only those committed by the Sunni.”

Discussion turned to the future of the American security role in the Gulf, with Wittes reminding the audience that the United States, though the strongest power, was not all-powerful. Though Al-Ketbi likewise conceded that the United States remained the top power in the region, she noted that “the GCC countries are diversifying their [strategic] relationships, perhaps because of the bitterness they feel [toward the United States].” Likewise, Pollack held that China and India would undoubtedly come to play a greater role in providing for Gulf security in the near future. “The question is whether they are going to be productive, responsible, constructive players, or destructive and divisive,” he said, arguing that the United States had a role to play in peacefully integrating rising powers into the existing Gulf security architecture.

In response to a question about potential GCC diplomatic engagement with Iran, Al-Ketbi maintained that attempts had been made at Track-II outreach to build trust between both sides. She maintained, though, that Iran had made it impossible for GCC actors to believe in promises made in either an official or an unofficial capacity. She also defended GCC support to the Egyptian government led by President al-Sisi, saying that “the GCC countries are not supporting Sisi, but Egypt and its stability, which are very important [to them.]”

Pollack and Wittes both responded to suggestions that U.S. policies toward the region were riddled with inconsistencies by suggesting that no great power’s foreign policy is ever fully internally consistent. “As long-time friends and allies, we should be able to recognize that we have differences,” said Pollack of U.S.-GCC relations. They both noted that the United States would have to find new ways to move forward on strategies regarding the region, but developing more inclusive approaches to resolving challenges such as arms proliferation in the Gulf and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Event Information

On June 1-3, 2015, the Brookings Institution, in conjunction with the State of Qatar, convened the 12th annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum. The theme of this year’s Forum was “Changing Assumptions,” which relates to historic shifts in geopolitical realities affecting the United States and Muslim-majority countries, as well as to societal and cultural norms.

The Forum’s plenary sessions (WEBCAST—see agenda below) highlighted several dimensions of relations with and within a rapidly changing Muslim world. Panelists discussed a wide range of topics, including:
-Strategic priorities for the United States and the Middle East
-Pluralism in the Islamic world
-The role of Iran in the region
-Advancing women’s role in an unstable Middle East
-Ending civil wars

Event Materials

Event Information

On June 1-3, 2015, the Brookings Institution, in conjunction with the State of Qatar, convened the 12th annual U.S.-Islamic World Forum. The theme of this year’s Forum was “Changing Assumptions,” which relates to historic shifts in geopolitical realities affecting the United States and Muslim-majority countries, as well as to societal and cultural norms.

The Forum’s plenary sessions (WEBCAST—see agenda below) highlighted several dimensions of relations with and within a rapidly changing Muslim world. Panelists discussed a wide range of topics, including:
-Strategic priorities for the United States and the Middle East
-Pluralism in the Islamic world
-The role of Iran in the region
-Advancing women’s role in an unstable Middle East
-Ending civil wars

Event Materials

]]>
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/05/22-iraq-ramadi-isis-islamic-state-washington?rssid=pollackk{4ADDCD5A-54B0-4290-8D91-B75DB82D88C2}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/92849158/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~Iraq-after-the-fall-of-Ramadi-How-to-avoid-another-unraveling-of-IraqIraq after the fall of Ramadi: How to avoid another unraveling of Iraq

The fall of Ramadi was an important setback for Iraq and the United States, but it does not have to be a catastrophe. Hopefully, it will prove to be a wake-up call for Baghdad and Washington, both of whom have become complacent in their approach to the civil war there.

A Step Back

I think it important to start by putting the fall of Ramadi in its proper perspective. Da’ish forces have been battling for Ramadi since December 2013, so while the denouement may have come somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly, this is not a new front in the war and it ultimately took Da’ish a very long time to take the city. Although Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) did eventually retreat from the town and abandoned at least some heavy weapons doing so, most reports indicate they fell back to defensive positions outside the town. They did not simply drop their guns and run pell-mell, as many did in June 2014.

Perhaps of greatest importance, it is highly unlikely that the fall of Ramadi will lead to massive additional gains by Da’ish as happened in June 2014. The city of Baghdad is not in any danger of falling to Da’ish. It is well-defended by tens of thousands of committed Shi’a militiamen and the most seasoned formations in the Iraqi army. Habbaniyah (the town lying between Ramadi and Fallujah) is certainly in danger—and is already under attack by Da’ish. However, it seems unlikely that Da’ish will be able to use Ramadi as a springboard for much more than that.

Part of the shock that many appear to have suffered from this defeat seems driven by the sense that the fall of Tikrit in April was a turning point in the war and that from there on out there would be nothing but Iraqi-Coalition victories leading to the complete liberation of Iraq. We should not confuse the current campaign in Iraq with wars like World War II and the Gulf War where just such a reversal of tide occurred. Simply put, the United States has not committed anything like the resources it committed to those two wars, so there is no reason to expect that this conflict will follow that pattern. The United States has devoted far, far fewer resources to the waging of this war (and our many allies have very limited capabilities). Consequently, it was always likely to be much more of a tug-of-war, with gains interrupted by losses. The trick is to ensure that we are taking two steps forward for every one step back, and not one step forward for every two steps back.

The Importance of the Loss of Ramadi

The reason that the Coalition defeat at Ramadi is important is because of its potential impact on the psychology of both sides. As I noted at the time, the liberation of Tikrit was of outsized importance because it reversed a dangerous narrative that held sway among many Iraqis, particularly Shi’a Arabs, after the fall of Mosul. This was the notion that the United States was a paper tiger, only Iran was Iraq’s true ally, only Iran had come to Baghdad’s assistance when Da’ish threatened in June, and only Iranian assistance was necessary to liberate Iraq from Da’ish. Tikrit could have reversed this narrative because the Iranian-backed Shi’a militias were unable to conquer the city themselves even after a bloody month of fighting. However, when Baghdad finally asked for American air support, Da’ish was driven out in less than a week. That impressed upon many Iraqis that Iranian support was not enough, and that only with American help could they liberate major Sunni towns.

Quite obviously, the fall of Ramadi threatens to reverse that narrative once again. This time, it was the American-backed Iraqi army that was unable to hold a major Sunni town on its own, even with American air support. Especially if the town is retaken by a force that includes Iranian-backed Shi’a militias, Iran’s allies will be able to make the case that Tikrit was a fluke — a product of understandable teething pains as the Shi’a militias mounted their first assault on a Sunni city, never to be repeated. It can only call back into question the necessity, even the utility, of American support. And that can only bolster Tehran’s influence in Baghdad at the expense of Washington’s. (I write this as someone who bristles at the simplistic argument that the geo-politics of the Middle East are a giant chess match between America and Iran. Unfortunately, when it comes to political influence in Baghdad today, it is a zero-sum competition between us.)

While we make much of the appeal of Da’ish’s religious zealotry, the evidence strongly indicates that many (perhaps most) of Da’ish recruits...are young men drawn to the power and glamour of Da’ish’s revolt against the traditional Middle Eastern power structure. Da’ish is kick ass.

In addition, Ramadi can only help Da’ish’s recruiting efforts. While we make much of the appeal of Da’ish’s religious zealotry, the evidence strongly indicates that many (perhaps most) of Da’ish recruits...are young men drawn to the power and glamour of Da’ish’s revolt against the traditional Middle Eastern power structure. Da’ish is kick ass. They have conquered a vast swath of Iraq and Syria and put a heavy hurt on the conventional militaries of the regimes. Far too many angry, frustrated, and sexually-repressed young Sunni Arab men sign up with Da’ish to become the dangerous rebels-with-a-cause of the Muslim world. The more victories that Da’ish wins, especially against American air power, the more that they burnish that image of power and edgy glamour that is so important to their recruiting efforts. The fall of Ramadi (and Palmyra in the same week) can only help swing the psychological momentum back to Da’ish.

The Lessons of Ramadi

Why did Ramadi fall to Da’ish? For a lot of reasons. The Obama administration has decided to focus on the tactical—bad weather, an unexpected failure of morale, inadequate antitank weapons—and by doing so feels justified in making only minor “tweaks” to its overarching course of action. Unfortunately, the loss of Ramadi is far more important than that.

For their part, many of the administration’s critics contend that the fall of Ramadi demonstrates that its strategy is wrong or that it has failed outright. They are demanding a fundamentally different approach to Iraq, although predictably critics on the Left are suggesting that the U.S. do less by shifting to containment, while those on the Right are suggesting that the U.S. do far more.

I see the problem differently. I think that the strategy the administration outlined in September 2014 was a reasonable one, and still a viable one albeit increasingly more difficult with each setback. I just don’t believe that it is being pursued or resourced properly. I see an administration that became so frightened in August-September 2014 that Da’ish was going to overrun Kurdistan—which would have been a major domestic political problem for the president’s policy of disengagement from Iraq—that it reversed course and agreed to a major new commitment to Iraq, and eventually Syria. According to various senior administration officials, at that time, the president consciously signed up for a massive air campaign, a large-scale program to rebuild and advise the Iraqi armed forces, a concomitant project to arm and train Sunni tribesmen, all of it tied together by a determined effort to forge a new power-sharing agreement to reconcile Iraq’s warring Sunni and Shi’a factions.

Unfortunately, that commitment only seems to have lasted a few months. By late 2014, the United States was already falling short. The Syria piece of the policy, both military and especially political, was going nowhere. In Iraq, the air campaign has been impressive, but hardly pervasive, let alone suffocating. The U.S. is now retraining only a handful of Iraqi army brigades—4-6 based on various accounts. The effort to train and arm Sunni fighters would be a joke were it not so lethally frustrating to the Sunnis themselves. The American advisory effort has been curtailed, kept to trainers and advisers at division level and above. No advisors accompanying Iraqi units in the field. No one to call in airstrikes. And there simply is no U.S.-led political effort to bring about national reconciliation, which is not surprising given how senior Administration officials privately deride it.

The effort to train and arm Sunni fighters would be a joke were it not so lethally frustrating to the Sunnis themselves.

On many of these issues, the administration has tended to blame the Iraqis for the problems: the Iraqis are incapable of negotiating a new political agreement, the Iraqi government refuses to arm and train the Sunnis, the Iraqis can’t or won’t send more battalions for training. While there is truth in all of these claims, they are all excuses for American inaction. Frequently, the United States has shied away from doing more even when the Iraqis have wanted us to do so. For instance, U.S. military officials report that Washington refuses to attach American advisors or forward air controllers to Iraqi field formations because the White House is insistent that not a single American be killed in this fight. (And that despite poll after poll after poll showing that the American people wants to do more, not less in Iraq and Syria, and favors the deployment of American ground troops in both places by as much as a 2-to-1 margin).

Another canard deployed by the administration is that the U.S. lacks the leverage to convince Iraqis to do what we want them to do. They say it as if they believe that influence is something that falls from the sky, rather than something that is created by a commitment of resources and political will. Whenever the United States has made a determined effort to press the Iraqi government to do something, Washington has gotten exactly the result it wanted. At Tikrit (and again at Ramadi), we insisted that no Shi’a militias participate, and the militias were kept out.

An even more important example is what happened in August 2014 when, faced with the Da’ish assault on Erbil, Washington demanded that Nuri al-Maliki step down as prime minister and a new prime minister be chosen to head a national unity government. The U.S. backed up these demands with resources: Washington committed air power and announced that it would provide training, advisors and military equipment; the president appointed a highly-respected special envoy, General John Allen; the U.S. made a full-court diplomatic press with multiple visits by Secretary of State Kerry and enlisted the help of our Arab and European allies. The outcome: the U.S. got exactly what it wanted. Maliki stepped down in favor of a national unity government led by Haidar al-Abadi—and it is worth noting that Abadi was a much better choice than most of the names then being considered. In short, when the United States made an effort to get what we wanted, we got it. The problem has been that since then, we simply haven’t made the same kind of effort.

Heeding the Warning

There is no reason that the loss of Ramadi has to be the start of yet another unraveling of Iraq. It is a politically alarming but militarily modest setback. But it is a warning that should be heeded. A warning that Iraq is not on a glide path to peace and stability. While such a path exists, like everything in Iraq, it will be long and hard and will require considerable American help for the Iraqis to follow it to the finish.

In Iraq, there simply is no substitute for American assistance...Either the U.S. does enough to pull the Iraqis through to peace and stability or the country will descend deeper into chaos and civil war.

In Iraq, there simply is no substitute for American assistance, political and military (Iranian assistance will only push the country deeper into civil war) but there is no equilibrium points other than war and peace. Either the U.S. does enough to pull the Iraqis through to peace and stability or the country will descend deeper into chaos and civil war. And doing enough does not necessarily require 160,000 ground troops or $25 billion in annual aid. Just doing what the administration promised and considered back in September 2014 would be a terrific start and may be all that is necessary. At the very least, that would mean:

Making a determined and sustained effort to engineer a new national reconciliation and power-sharing arrangement among all of Iraq’s factions, as the United States did in 2007-2008. Unfortunately, much as we and they wish it to be otherwise, history has demonstrated that the Iraqis cannot do this without American help.

Providing additional American and other Western military personnel to expand the training of the Iraqi army, advise and accompany Iraqi formations down to at least battalion level in the field, and serve as forward observers to call in air-strikes and other forms of fire support for Iraqi units.

Expanding the program to arm and train Sunni tribesmen as paramilitary adjuncts to the Iraqi armed forces. The U.S. may have to insist on this over the objection of many Shi’a Iraqis.

Expanding military and non-military assistance to Iraq and the Abadi government as leverage for American diplomats and to reinforce Prime Minister Abadi’s own stature. The Iraqis may or may not have a military need for more weapons (although the decision to expedite the delivery of anti-tank weapons suggests that they do), but there is no question that the Abadi government needs these weapons for political reasons, to push back on his rivals who claim that Iraq can get everything it needs from Iran. Likewise, non-military aid (especially to deal with Iraq’s urgent financial crisis) would highlight America’s ability to provide Iraq with help that Iran simply can’t.

Even if we do all of this, there is no guarantee that Iraq will all work out okay. The time when we had good, easy answers for the problems of Iraq are long gone. All that we are left with is finding the least bad among what remains. But pursuing these shifts will give the United States and Iraq the best possible chance to achieve enduring peace and stability. Of greater importance still, there is no other course of action that can. Certainly not continuing the half-hearted current approach.

Authors

The fall of Ramadi was an important setback for Iraq and the United States, but it does not have to be a catastrophe. Hopefully, it will prove to be a wake-up call for Baghdad and Washington, both of whom have become complacent in their approach to the civil war there.

A Step Back

I think it important to start by putting the fall of Ramadi in its proper perspective. Da’ish forces have been battling for Ramadi since December 2013, so while the denouement may have come somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly, this is not a new front in the war and it ultimately took Da’ish a very long time to take the city. Although Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) did eventually retreat from the town and abandoned at least some heavy weapons doing so, most reports indicate they fell back to defensive positions outside the town. They did not simply drop their guns and run pell-mell, as many did in June 2014.

Perhaps of greatest importance, it is highly unlikely that the fall of Ramadi will lead to massive additional gains by Da’ish as happened in June 2014. The city of Baghdad is not in any danger of falling to Da’ish. It is well-defended by tens of thousands of committed Shi’a militiamen and the most seasoned formations in the Iraqi army. Habbaniyah (the town lying between Ramadi and Fallujah) is certainly in danger—and is already under attack by Da’ish. However, it seems unlikely that Da’ish will be able to use Ramadi as a springboard for much more than that.

Part of the shock that many appear to have suffered from this defeat seems driven by the sense that the fall of Tikrit in April was a turning point in the war and that from there on out there would be nothing but Iraqi-Coalition victories leading to the complete liberation of Iraq. We should not confuse the current campaign in Iraq with wars like World War II and the Gulf War where just such a reversal of tide occurred. Simply put, the United States has not committed anything like the resources it committed to those two wars, so there is no reason to expect that this conflict will follow that pattern. The United States has devoted far, far fewer resources to the waging of this war (and our many allies have very limited capabilities). Consequently, it was always likely to be much more of a tug-of-war, with gains interrupted by losses. The trick is to ensure that we are taking two steps forward for every one step back, and not one step forward for every two steps back.

The Importance of the Loss of Ramadi

The reason that the Coalition defeat at Ramadi is important is because of its potential impact on the psychology of both sides. As I noted at the time, the liberation of Tikrit was of outsized importance because it reversed a dangerous narrative that held sway among many Iraqis, particularly Shi’a Arabs, after the fall of Mosul. This was the notion that the United States was a paper tiger, only Iran was Iraq’s true ally, only Iran had come to Baghdad’s assistance when Da’ish threatened in June, and only Iranian assistance was necessary to liberate Iraq from Da’ish. Tikrit could have reversed this narrative because the Iranian-backed Shi’a militias were unable to conquer the city themselves even after a bloody month of fighting. However, when Baghdad finally asked for American air support, Da’ish was driven out in less than a week. That impressed upon many Iraqis that Iranian support was not enough, and that only with American help could they liberate major Sunni towns.

Quite obviously, the fall of Ramadi threatens to reverse that narrative once again. This time, it was the American-backed Iraqi army that was unable to hold a major Sunni town on its own, even with American air support. Especially if the town is retaken by a force that includes Iranian-backed Shi’a militias, Iran’s allies will be able to make the case that Tikrit was a fluke — a product of understandable teething pains as the Shi’a militias mounted their first assault on a Sunni city, never to be repeated. It can only call back into question the necessity, even the utility, of American support. And that can only bolster Tehran’s influence in Baghdad at the expense of Washington’s. (I write this as someone who bristles at the simplistic argument that the geo-politics of the Middle East are a giant chess match between America and Iran. Unfortunately, when it comes to political influence in Baghdad today, it is a zero-sum competition between us.)

While we make much of the appeal of Da’ish’s religious zealotry, the evidence strongly indicates that many (perhaps most) of Da’ish recruits...are young men drawn to the power and glamour of Da’ish’s revolt against the traditional Middle Eastern power structure. Da’ish is kick ass.

In addition, Ramadi can only help Da’ish’s recruiting efforts. While we make much of the appeal of Da’ish’s religious zealotry, the evidence strongly indicates that many (perhaps most) of Da’ish recruits...are young men drawn to the power and glamour of Da’ish’s revolt against the traditional Middle Eastern power structure. Da’ish is kick ass. They have conquered a vast swath of Iraq and Syria and put a heavy hurt on the conventional militaries of the regimes. Far too many angry, frustrated, and sexually-repressed young Sunni Arab men sign up with Da’ish to become the dangerous rebels-with-a-cause of the Muslim world. The more victories that Da’ish wins, especially against American air power, the more that they burnish that image of power and edgy glamour that is so important to their recruiting efforts. The fall of Ramadi (and Palmyra in the same week) can only help swing the psychological momentum back to Da’ish.

The Lessons of Ramadi

Why did Ramadi fall to Da’ish? For a lot of reasons. The Obama administration has decided to focus on the tactical—bad weather, an unexpected failure of morale, inadequate antitank weapons—and by doing so feels justified in making only minor “tweaks” to its overarching course of action. Unfortunately, the loss of Ramadi is far more important than that.

For their part, many of the administration’s critics contend that the fall of Ramadi demonstrates that its strategy is wrong or that it has failed outright. They are demanding a fundamentally different approach to Iraq, although predictably critics on the Left are suggesting that the U.S. do less by shifting to containment, while those on the Right are suggesting that the U.S. do far more.

I see the problem differently. I think that the strategy the administration outlined in September 2014 was a reasonable one, and still a viable one albeit increasingly more difficult with each setback. I just don’t believe that it is being pursued or resourced properly. I see an administration that became so frightened in August-September 2014 that Da’ish was going to overrun Kurdistan—which would have been a major domestic political problem for the president’s policy of disengagement from Iraq—that it reversed course and agreed to a major new commitment to Iraq, and eventually Syria. According to various senior administration officials, at that time, the president consciously signed up for a massive air campaign, a large-scale program to rebuild and advise the Iraqi armed forces, a concomitant project to arm and train Sunni tribesmen, all of it tied together by a determined effort to forge a new power-sharing agreement to reconcile Iraq’s warring Sunni and Shi’a factions.

Unfortunately, that commitment only seems to have lasted a few months. By late 2014, the United States was already falling short. The Syria piece of the policy, both military and especially political, was going nowhere. In Iraq, the air campaign has been impressive, but hardly pervasive, let alone suffocating. The U.S. is now retraining only a handful of Iraqi army brigades—4-6 based on various accounts. The effort to train and arm Sunni fighters would be a joke were it not so lethally frustrating to the Sunnis themselves. The American advisory effort has been curtailed, kept to trainers and advisers at division level and above. No advisors accompanying Iraqi units in the field. No one to call in airstrikes. And there simply is no U.S.-led political effort to bring about national reconciliation, which is not surprising given how senior Administration officials privately deride it.

The effort to train and arm Sunni fighters would be a joke were it not so lethally frustrating to the Sunnis themselves.

On many of these issues, the administration has tended to blame the Iraqis for the problems: the Iraqis are incapable of negotiating a new political agreement, the Iraqi government refuses to arm and train the Sunnis, the Iraqis can’t or won’t send more battalions for training. While there is truth in all of these claims, they are all excuses for American inaction. Frequently, the United States has shied away from doing more even when the Iraqis have wanted us to do so. For instance, U.S. military officials report that Washington refuses to attach American advisors or forward air controllers to Iraqi field formations because the White House is insistent that not a single American be killed in this fight. (And that despite poll after poll after poll showing that the American people wants to do more, not less in Iraq and Syria, and favors the deployment of American ground troops in both places by as much as a 2-to-1 margin).

Another canard deployed by the administration is that the U.S. lacks the leverage to convince Iraqis to do what we want them to do. They say it as if they believe that influence is something that falls from the sky, rather than something that is created by a commitment of resources and political will. Whenever the United States has made a determined effort to press the Iraqi government to do something, Washington has gotten exactly the result it wanted. At Tikrit (and again at Ramadi), we insisted that no Shi’a militias participate, and the militias were kept out.

An even more important example is what happened in August 2014 when, faced with the Da’ish assault on Erbil, Washington demanded that Nuri al-Maliki step down as prime minister and a new prime minister be chosen to head a national unity government. The U.S. backed up these demands with resources: Washington committed air power and announced that it would provide training, advisors and military equipment; the president appointed a highly-respected special envoy, General John Allen; the U.S. made a full-court diplomatic press with multiple visits by Secretary of State Kerry and enlisted the help of our Arab and European allies. The outcome: the U.S. got exactly what it wanted. Maliki stepped down in favor of a national unity government led by Haidar al-Abadi—and it is worth noting that Abadi was a much better choice than most of the names then being considered. In short, when the United States made an effort to get what we wanted, we got it. The problem has been that since then, we simply haven’t made the same kind of effort.

Heeding the Warning

There is no reason that the loss of Ramadi has to be the start of yet another unraveling of Iraq. It is a politically alarming but militarily modest setback. But it is a warning that should be heeded. A warning that Iraq is not on a glide path to peace and stability. While such a path exists, like everything in Iraq, it will be long and hard and will require considerable American help for the Iraqis to follow it to the finish.

In Iraq, there simply is no substitute for American assistance...Either the U.S. does enough to pull the Iraqis through to peace and stability or the country will descend deeper into chaos and civil war.

In Iraq, there simply is no substitute for American assistance, political and military (Iranian assistance will only push the country deeper into civil war) but there is no equilibrium points other than war and peace. Either the U.S. does enough to pull the Iraqis through to peace and stability or the country will descend deeper into chaos and civil war. And doing enough does not necessarily require 160,000 ground troops or $25 billion in annual aid. Just doing what the administration promised and considered back in September 2014 would be a terrific start and may be all that is necessary. At the very least, that would mean:

Making a determined and sustained effort to engineer a new national reconciliation and power-sharing arrangement among all of Iraq’s factions, as the United States did in 2007-2008. Unfortunately, much as we and they wish it to be otherwise, history has demonstrated that the Iraqis cannot do this without American help.

Providing additional American and other Western military personnel to expand the training of the Iraqi army, advise and accompany Iraqi formations down to at least battalion level in the field, and serve as forward observers to call in air-strikes and other forms of fire support for Iraqi units.

Expanding the program to arm and train Sunni tribesmen as paramilitary adjuncts to the Iraqi armed forces. The U.S. may have to insist on this over the objection of many Shi’a Iraqis.

Expanding military and non-military assistance to Iraq and the Abadi government as leverage for American diplomats and to reinforce Prime Minister Abadi’s own stature. The Iraqis may or may not have a military need for more weapons (although the decision to expedite the delivery of anti-tank weapons suggests that they do), but there is no question that the Abadi government needs these weapons for political reasons, to push back on his rivals who claim that Iraq can get everything it needs from Iran. Likewise, non-military aid (especially to deal with Iraq’s urgent financial crisis) would highlight America’s ability to provide Iraq with help that Iran simply can’t.

Even if we do all of this, there is no guarantee that Iraq will all work out okay. The time when we had good, easy answers for the problems of Iraq are long gone. All that we are left with is finding the least bad among what remains. But pursuing these shifts will give the United States and Iraq the best possible chance to achieve enduring peace and stability. Of greater importance still, there is no other course of action that can. Certainly not continuing the half-hearted current approach.

On May 11, the Center for Middle East Policy hosted a conversation with two influential Sunni leaders from Iraq on the country’s future. Moderated by Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack, the discussion featured Rafe al-Issawi, who served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance under former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and Atheel al-Nujayfi, governor of Ninewah Province, whose capital, Mosul, is controlled by the Islamic State.

Dismantle the militias, institutionalize the security forces

Rafe al-Issawi began by asserting that Iraq’s Shiite militias—many of which are backed by Iran—are equally brutal as the (Sunni) Islamic State forces which they are fighting. While the Shiite militias may help defeat IS, Issawi warned that it will result in a fragmented Iraq ruled by militias and warlords. He advocated dismantling the militias and replacing them with government forces that recruit individual members, both Sunni and Shiite, rather than absorbing entire militias into the official cadres.

Issawi presented his vision of a new counterinsurgency approach, which he described as a modified version of General David Petraeus’s model. His plan would establish “joint committees” composed of representatives from Iraq’s central government, U.S. advisors, and local forces, restructure Iraq’s army into a national, non-sectarian fighting force, and recruit and train Sunni (and Kurdish) fighters as a national guard.

Issawi argued that all resources should be devoted to unifying Iraqis to fight against the Islamic State, but he also emphasized that creating robust, inclusive political institutions in Iraq is equally important.

Federalism, decentralization of power, and the constitution

Governor Atheel al-Nujayfi offered his vision for Iraq’s post-Islamic State political landscape. Although adamant that Iraq should remain unified, Nujayfi recommended decentralization as outlined in the Iraqi constitution and called for significant provincial autonomy. He explained, “I believe authority in Iraq should be split up, but not Iraq itself.” Nujayfi offered the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as a model.

Issawi agreed that the solutions for building a strong, stable, democratic Iraq are already contained in the constitution; the problem, he said, is that the constitution is not being respected and implemented. “There is no shortage of the right ideas” in Iraq, he said. What is needed is “a real action plan, not just promises.”

Reconciliation, amnesty, and compensation

Issawi lamented that when it comes to Iraq’s political institutions, “Everything needs to be restored. Everything is damaged. We have to rebuild again.” Reconciliation, especially between Shiite and Sunni communities, is a critical piece of the rebuilding project. However, Issawi warned that it will take time and will require confidence-building measures to restore trust, including amnesty for Sunnis who allied with the Islamic State as a means of protection. Finally, Issawi explained that humanitarian aid and financial compensation for the thousands of refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDPs) produced by this latest conflagration is essential for Iraq to stabilize itself.

America’s role

Issawi listed four ways the United States can help Iraq toward a more stable future:

Help dismantle the militias and rebuild the national security forces;

Enable the rapid arming of Sunnis and Kurds via the “joint committees”;

Support the creation of a national guard;

Provide financial support to help compensate the thousands of refugees and IDPs.

Issawi said that Iraq’s Sunnis are Washington’s greatest potential allies in the fight against the Islamic State. He declared, “I came [here today] not as a politician but as a man warning his allies that there’s a burning Iraq. Come to extinguish it.”

The future is key

In the end, all the discussants agreed that overcoming Iraq’s current challenges will require commitment to a unified, inclusive, and democratic future. “Is democracy a real solution?” asked Issawi. “Yes. Is democracy a real option? Yes. But it is fragile.” Ultimately, they argued that Iraq must develop political institutions that are capable of resolving its internal conflicts as well as preventing them from reigniting.

Authors

Jennifer R. Williams

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Tue, 12 May 2015 13:40:00 -0400Jennifer R. Williams

On May 11, the Center for Middle East Policy hosted a conversation with two influential Sunni leaders from Iraq on the country’s future. Moderated by Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack, the discussion featured Rafe al-Issawi, who served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance under former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and Atheel al-Nujayfi, governor of Ninewah Province, whose capital, Mosul, is controlled by the Islamic State.

Dismantle the militias, institutionalize the security forces

Rafe al-Issawi began by asserting that Iraq’s Shiite militias—many of which are backed by Iran—are equally brutal as the (Sunni) Islamic State forces which they are fighting. While the Shiite militias may help defeat IS, Issawi warned that it will result in a fragmented Iraq ruled by militias and warlords. He advocated dismantling the militias and replacing them with government forces that recruit individual members, both Sunni and Shiite, rather than absorbing entire militias into the official cadres.

Issawi presented his vision of a new counterinsurgency approach, which he described as a modified version of General David Petraeus’s model. His plan would establish “joint committees” composed of representatives from Iraq’s central government, U.S. advisors, and local forces, restructure Iraq’s army into a national, non-sectarian fighting force, and recruit and train Sunni (and Kurdish) fighters as a national guard.

Issawi argued that all resources should be devoted to unifying Iraqis to fight against the Islamic State, but he also emphasized that creating robust, inclusive political institutions in Iraq is equally important.

Federalism, decentralization of power, and the constitution

Governor Atheel al-Nujayfi offered his vision for Iraq’s post-Islamic State political landscape. Although adamant that Iraq should remain unified, Nujayfi recommended decentralization as outlined in the Iraqi constitution and called for significant provincial autonomy. He explained, “I believe authority in Iraq should be split up, but not Iraq itself.” Nujayfi offered the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) as a model.

Issawi agreed that the solutions for building a strong, stable, democratic Iraq are already contained in the constitution; the problem, he said, is that the constitution is not being respected and implemented. “There is no shortage of the right ideas” in Iraq, he said. What is needed is “a real action plan, not just promises.”

Reconciliation, amnesty, and compensation

Issawi lamented that when it comes to Iraq’s political institutions, “Everything needs to be restored. Everything is damaged. We have to rebuild again.” Reconciliation, especially between Shiite and Sunni communities, is a critical piece of the rebuilding project. However, Issawi warned that it will take time and will require confidence-building measures to restore trust, including amnesty for Sunnis who allied with the Islamic State as a means of protection. Finally, Issawi explained that humanitarian aid and financial compensation for the thousands of refugees and internally-displaced persons (IDPs) produced by this latest conflagration is essential for Iraq to stabilize itself.

America’s role

Issawi listed four ways the United States can help Iraq toward a more stable future:

Help dismantle the militias and rebuild the national security forces;

Enable the rapid arming of Sunnis and Kurds via the “joint committees”;

Support the creation of a national guard;

Provide financial support to help compensate the thousands of refugees and IDPs.

Issawi said that Iraq’s Sunnis are Washington’s greatest potential allies in the fight against the Islamic State. He declared, “I came [here today] not as a politician but as a man warning his allies that there’s a burning Iraq. Come to extinguish it.”

The future is key

In the end, all the discussants agreed that overcoming Iraq’s current challenges will require commitment to a unified, inclusive, and democratic future. “Is democracy a real solution?” asked Issawi. “Yes. Is democracy a real option? Yes. But it is fragile.” Ultimately, they argued that Iraq must develop political institutions that are capable of resolving its internal conflicts as well as preventing them from reigniting.

Authors

Jennifer R. Williams

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http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/05/11-future-of-iraq?rssid=pollackk{A84F7C61-D06B-4A76-85A1-BC2F3971EDD4}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/91645083/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~The-future-of-Iraq-A-conversation-with-Sunni-leadersThe future of Iraq: A conversation with Sunni leaders

Event Information

A significant victory against ISIS in Iraq will require meaningful reconciliation between Iraq's warring communities. The greatest unknown is Iraq's Sunni population. Their isolation from the Iraqi political system, stemming from the divisive policies of the previous Iraqi government, opened the door to ISIS's return to Iraq and lies at the heart of this new Iraqi civil war. If Iraq is to achieve peace again and remain a unified state, one of the most important questions is how to bring Iraq’s Sunnis back into the fold.

On Monday, May 11, the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution hosted a conversation with two key Sunni leaders from Iraq. Rafe al-Issawi served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance under former Prime Minister Maliki, and is one of the most prominent Sunni leaders from Anbar province; Atheel al-Nujayfi is the governor of Ninewah Province and one of the most prominent Sunni leaders from Mosul. These leading Sunni officials discussed the future of Iraq with moderator and Brookings Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack. They explored the Sunni role in leading Iraq going forward, Sunni concerns about marginalization, and what role the United States might play in this delicate but vital process.

Event Information

A significant victory against ISIS in Iraq will require meaningful reconciliation between Iraq's warring communities. The greatest unknown is Iraq's Sunni population. Their isolation from the Iraqi political system, stemming from the divisive policies of the previous Iraqi government, opened the door to ISIS's return to Iraq and lies at the heart of this new Iraqi civil war. If Iraq is to achieve peace again and remain a unified state, one of the most important questions is how to bring Iraq’s Sunnis back into the fold.

On Monday, May 11, the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution hosted a conversation with two key Sunni leaders from Iraq. Rafe al-Issawi served as deputy prime minister and minister of finance under former Prime Minister Maliki, and is one of the most prominent Sunni leaders from Anbar province; Atheel al-Nujayfi is the governor of Ninewah Province and one of the most prominent Sunni leaders from Mosul. These leading Sunni officials discussed the future of Iraq with moderator and Brookings Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack. They explored the Sunni role in leading Iraq going forward, Sunni concerns about marginalization, and what role the United States might play in this delicate but vital process.

There are at least two ways to look at the dramatic changes to Saudi leadership announced yesterday. One is to see this as King Salman finally setting up the long-overdue generational transition from the sons of the first king, Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa’ud, to his grandsons, as well as empowering some of the best and brightest of that next generation. It is unquestionably true that many of the men that Salman has appointed to new posts yesterday and in preceding months represent some of the most capable, best educated, and most highly-respected figures of the younger generation of Saudi princes and technocrats. It is a happy story, and one that should not be dismissed despite what I am about to tell you.

The other way to see the events in the Kingdom is that it represents a Sudayri coup. At the very least, it is a major consolidation of power by the Sudayri wing of the al-Sa’ud royal family. The Sudayris are the sons and grandsons of King Abd al-Aziz with his favorite wife, Hassa bint Ahmed al-Sudayri. That union produced 7 sons, the largest bloc of full brothers among the dozens of sons of Abd al-Aziz. The late King Fahd was the oldest of them, but they also included the late former Defense Minister Sultan, the late former Interior Minister Nayef, and now King Salman. For decades, the Sudayris constituted an extremely powerful grouping within the royal family and during King Fahd’s reign they effectively ran the country. But their power and cohesiveness inspired sibling rivalries, and many of their half-brothers disliked their policies as much as their efforts to monopolize power.

Today, as a result of Salman’s many changes, nearly every major post in the Saudi cabinet is held by either a Sudayri or a non-royal— able technocrats like Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi or the new Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. Only Prince Mitaib, the son of the late King Abdullah, remains as a non-Sudayri prince in charge of a key ministry (the National Guard). And although it was widely believed that the aged and ailing Prince Sa’ud al-Faisal was looking to step down as foreign minister— and no one can gainsay the appointment of the highly-capable Adel al-Jubeir as his successor— Sa’ud Faisal’s removal eliminates still another powerful, non-Sudayri prince from the cabinet.

Most stunning of all, the king removed Prince Muqrin bin Abd al-Aziz as the crown prince. Prince Muqrin was the last son of Abd al-Aziz in the succession chain, he was relatively young by the standards of Saudi princes (69 years old), and was reportedly picked by King Abdullah to follow Salman in part to prevent the further monopolization of power by the Sudayris. Since the formation of the Saudi state in 1932, the al-Sa’ud have never removed a crown prince. They did remove a sitting king once (Sa’ud bin Abd al-Aziz in 1964) but never a crown prince. Moreover, this unprecedented move leaves the next two princes in line of succession as Sudayris from the younger generation—Muhammad bin Nayef (55 years old) and Muhammad bin Salman (the king’s son, probably 30 years old). It means that the Sudayris could reign for another 50 years.

There are a number of reasons why this Sudayri consolidation could be of concern to the United States in addition to the fact that it is almost certainly resented by many other Saudi princes, and likely important non-royals as well. The most important of these is that in the past the Sudayris have been associated with internal and external policies that have created problems for the Kingdom. At the level of gross generalization, the Sudayris are typically associated with overspending, unchecked corruption, impious behavior, and a reliance on massive payoffs or repression to deal with domestic discontent. In the foreign policy arena, they have often favored a pro-American, anti-Iranian foreign policy, one that has been quite aggressive by Saudi standards and has risked getting the Kingdom into confrontational situations that the U.S. found unnecessary if not dangerous.

For the most part, the Sudayris now in power are from the next generation. Again, they are much better educated and more worldly than their fathers. We can all hope that they have learned the lessons of past mistakes and won’t repeat them. But there are some worrying signs already. King Abdallah steadfastly (and smartly) resisted getting directly involved in any of the civil wars on the Kingdom’s borders— Iraq, Yemen and Syria (one state removed). While the Saudis claim that they only intervened in Yemen grudgingly, they did not have to do so at all. I regard that intervention as a dangerous mistake, and I note that it happened barely four months after a Sudayri king took over from a non-Sudayri. In a similarly disquieting vein, twice now King Salman has made massive cash payouts to his constituents—a general bonus for all Saudi government workers upon his accession (and most of the Saudi workforce works for the government) and another round of bonuses for the Saudi armed forces and security services which was announced along with the cabinet changes yesterday. It is hard not to see these as the same kind of payoffs made by Roman emperors starting with Caligula to buy the acquiescence of key power bases and potential threats like the military.

Again, this is a very competent group of princes and each individual move can be easily justified by the age and ability of the incoming and outgoing office-holders. But it is worth noting the changing shape of the forest even as we admire the individual trees. At a time when Saudi Arabia is under increasing pressure from low oil prices, the rise of Salafi extremists like ISIS, and four civil wars spilling over across the Middle East— not to mention the longstanding structural problems of the Kingdom’s political, economic and social systems— a shift back to the old, dangerous policies of previous Sudayri rule could create real problems for Saudi stability in the future.

Authors

There are at least two ways to look at the dramatic changes to Saudi leadership announced yesterday. One is to see this as King Salman finally setting up the long-overdue generational transition from the sons of the first king, Abd al-Aziz ibn Sa’ud, to his grandsons, as well as empowering some of the best and brightest of that next generation. It is unquestionably true that many of the men that Salman has appointed to new posts yesterday and in preceding months represent some of the most capable, best educated, and most highly-respected figures of the younger generation of Saudi princes and technocrats. It is a happy story, and one that should not be dismissed despite what I am about to tell you.

The other way to see the events in the Kingdom is that it represents a Sudayri coup. At the very least, it is a major consolidation of power by the Sudayri wing of the al-Sa’ud royal family. The Sudayris are the sons and grandsons of King Abd al-Aziz with his favorite wife, Hassa bint Ahmed al-Sudayri. That union produced 7 sons, the largest bloc of full brothers among the dozens of sons of Abd al-Aziz. The late King Fahd was the oldest of them, but they also included the late former Defense Minister Sultan, the late former Interior Minister Nayef, and now King Salman. For decades, the Sudayris constituted an extremely powerful grouping within the royal family and during King Fahd’s reign they effectively ran the country. But their power and cohesiveness inspired sibling rivalries, and many of their half-brothers disliked their policies as much as their efforts to monopolize power.

Today, as a result of Salman’s many changes, nearly every major post in the Saudi cabinet is held by either a Sudayri or a non-royal— able technocrats like Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi or the new Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. Only Prince Mitaib, the son of the late King Abdullah, remains as a non-Sudayri prince in charge of a key ministry (the National Guard). And although it was widely believed that the aged and ailing Prince Sa’ud al-Faisal was looking to step down as foreign minister— and no one can gainsay the appointment of the highly-capable Adel al-Jubeir as his successor— Sa’ud Faisal’s removal eliminates still another powerful, non-Sudayri prince from the cabinet.

Most stunning of all, the king removed Prince Muqrin bin Abd al-Aziz as the crown prince. Prince Muqrin was the last son of Abd al-Aziz in the succession chain, he was relatively young by the standards of Saudi princes (69 years old), and was reportedly picked by King Abdullah to follow Salman in part to prevent the further monopolization of power by the Sudayris. Since the formation of the Saudi state in 1932, the al-Sa’ud have never removed a crown prince. They did remove a sitting king once (Sa’ud bin Abd al-Aziz in 1964) but never a crown prince. Moreover, this unprecedented move leaves the next two princes in line of succession as Sudayris from the younger generation—Muhammad bin Nayef (55 years old) and Muhammad bin Salman (the king’s son, probably 30 years old). It means that the Sudayris could reign for another 50 years.

There are a number of reasons why this Sudayri consolidation could be of concern to the United States in addition to the fact that it is almost certainly resented by many other Saudi princes, and likely important non-royals as well. The most important of these is that in the past the Sudayris have been associated with internal and external policies that have created problems for the Kingdom. At the level of gross generalization, the Sudayris are typically associated with overspending, unchecked corruption, impious behavior, and a reliance on massive payoffs or repression to deal with domestic discontent. In the foreign policy arena, they have often favored a pro-American, anti-Iranian foreign policy, one that has been quite aggressive by Saudi standards and has risked getting the Kingdom into confrontational situations that the U.S. found unnecessary if not dangerous.

For the most part, the Sudayris now in power are from the next generation. Again, they are much better educated and more worldly than their fathers. We can all hope that they have learned the lessons of past mistakes and won’t repeat them. But there are some worrying signs already. King Abdallah steadfastly (and smartly) resisted getting directly involved in any of the civil wars on the Kingdom’s borders— Iraq, Yemen and Syria (one state removed). While the Saudis claim that they only intervened in Yemen grudgingly, they did not have to do so at all. I regard that intervention as a dangerous mistake, and I note that it happened barely four months after a Sudayri king took over from a non-Sudayri. In a similarly disquieting vein, twice now King Salman has made massive cash payouts to his constituents—a general bonus for all Saudi government workers upon his accession (and most of the Saudi workforce works for the government) and another round of bonuses for the Saudi armed forces and security services which was announced along with the cabinet changes yesterday. It is hard not to see these as the same kind of payoffs made by Roman emperors starting with Caligula to buy the acquiescence of key power bases and potential threats like the military.

Again, this is a very competent group of princes and each individual move can be easily justified by the age and ability of the incoming and outgoing office-holders. But it is worth noting the changing shape of the forest even as we admire the individual trees. At a time when Saudi Arabia is under increasing pressure from low oil prices, the rise of Salafi extremists like ISIS, and four civil wars spilling over across the Middle East— not to mention the longstanding structural problems of the Kingdom’s political, economic and social systems— a shift back to the old, dangerous policies of previous Sudayri rule could create real problems for Saudi stability in the future.

Tomorrow, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi will meet with President Obama for the first time as prime minister of Iraq. For the past 12 years, there has hardly been an occasion when such a meeting between the U.S. president and the Iraqi prime minister did not come at an important time, but this meeting comes at a watershed moment. Iraq could move in many possible directions, most bad, but some potentially quite good. It is absolutely critical that the Obama administration grasps this opportunity to put Iraq firmly on the right track.

The Tikrit victory

A lot has happened in Iraq recently, much of it well-covered by the international media, at least in its immediate dimensions.

First and foremost was the liberation of Tikrit. As I noted in a post soon after the battle was joined, the most important thing to understand about the battle for Tikrit is that it was planned and initially executed almost entirely by Iraq's Shi'a militias and their Iranian advisors. The militia leaders did not even notify the Iraqi government of their intended attack on Tikrit until six days before it commenced, and offered to allow government forces to participate only on condition that the United States was excluded. Prime Minister Abadi did what he had to do, committing small numbers of troops to the fight and publicly taking ownership of the operation so as to not look irrelevant in his own country.

But then, the best thing of all happened: the militias were stymied by Da'ish fighters, prevented from clearing the city. The government turned to the United States for air support to break the deadlock and the United States, in the persons of CENTCOM Commander General Lloyd Austin and Ambassador Stuart Jones, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, agreed to provide everything the Iraqis needed, on condition that the militias back off. This was exactly the right move and the Obama administration deserves credit for seizing the opportunity.

Best of all, within days of the start of U.S. airstrikes, Da'ish was driven from Tikrit. As General Austin and Ambassador Jones (among others) argued, this has begun to change the narrative in Iraq in important ways. For the militia leaders and their Iranian advisors, the whole point of the assault was to demonstrate that they had complete freedom of action and could liberate even large Sunni cities without American support. If they could do so, it would reinforce to Iraqis that they did not need the United States, and the United States could not do anything to stop the Iranian-backed militias. The fact that they failed to take Tikrit after a month, but the U.S. airstrikes resulted in its fall in less than a week has reversed the narrative. While it is just unclear what the average Iraqi believes right now, Iraqi elites—Sunni and Shi'a—increasingly recognize that the Iranians and their allies cannot do what the Americans supporting Iraqi Security Force (ISF) units could. That is huge.

The shift to Anbar

There is some more good news. It looks like Baghdad has chosen not to try to liberate Mosul next, but will instead shift its focus to Anbar to clear much or all of that western province before turning back north. That matters because, as I and any number of other commentators have noted, taking Mosul will be a major challenge, both militarily and politically. Mosul is a massive, multi-ethnic city and the crown jewel of the Da'ish empire, such as it is. Taking it could easily prove more difficult than Tikrit.

The cities and towns of Anbar, in contrast, tend to be smaller and far more homogeneous. It is also likely to be more difficult for the Shi'a militias to get involved there because they won't have much (if any) support from the local populace. Instead, they will be wholly dependent on the government for sustainment, which will allow Baghdad to simply cut off their supplies, as it seems to have eventually done to the militias in the Tikrit fighting.

Going after the smaller cities of Anbar should allow Iraqi army formations to gain valuable combat experience, build their cohesion and leadership, and secure the trust of Iraq's Sunni community. In each operation, with American support, Iraqi security forces can work out both the military and political kinks in their methodologies, and do so in smaller, more easily-managed operations. Hopefully, they can create a sense of momentum that will bolster Prime Minister Abadi and reassure the Sunni community that its liberation is inevitable, while simultaneously giving Sunni Iraqis the confidence that when the ISF comes to town, they can feel safe under its protection. That is critically important given the widespread fear among Sunni Iraqis of the Shi'a militias, which have conducted ethnic cleansing and inflicted punitive retribution in some, perhaps many, of the areas they have retaken from Da'ish.

Refocusing on the long term

As I have warned elsewhere the greatest ongoing problem with the current U.S. approach to Iraq is its continuing focus on short-term operations and neglect of the long-term question of Iraq's political future. This is not an academic question that can be left to some future date. It is the single most important question facing Iraq today, and if it is not addressed properly, it will unravel all of the near-term political and military gains won by Iraqis and Americans.

Without rehearsing the entire issue, the question that every Iraqi wants to know is what kind of Iraq will exist after Da'ish is driven from Iraq—something all Iraqis now see as merely a matter of time. We need to remember that it was former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's subversion of Iraqi democracy and alienation of the Sunni community that caused the state to collapse again, allowed Da'ish to overrun the northwest, and plunged the country back into civil war. If there is not a new power-sharing arrangement among Sunnis and Shi'a that will make the Sunnis feel comfortable rejoining the government—one that assures them of political weight and economic benefits commensurate with their demographic strength, and that will make them feel safe from violent repression by the government—they will continue to fight, with or without Da'ish. As I have warned, in those circumstances, military victory over Da'ish will not end the fighting, it will enflame it.

Here the United States has some important things going for it. First, as I noted above, the United States actually has quite a good team working on Iraq. Ambassador Jones has proven to be smart, energetic and able, and he has some good support. Generals Austin, Terry and Bednarek have similarly handled the military situation with care and skill. And perhaps of greatest importance, we have Prime Minister Abadi himself, whom a wide swathe of Iraqis consider (probably correctly) to be Iraq's last, best hope.

The importance of helping Prime Minister Abadi succeed

Time and again, Abadi has taken difficult, risky steps to pull Iraq in the right direction. His decisions to disband the Office of the Commander in Chief, sack the worst of the political generals appointed by Maliki, accept American military advisers, oppose Hadi al-Ameri (Iran's most important Iraqi ally) as minister of the interior, strike two deals with the Kurds over oil, reach out to Iraq's Sunni leadership, arm Sunni fighters, and request American air support at Tikrit over the objections of the Shi'a militia leaders, all speak to his determination to do the right thing. Every one of those decisions (and a range of others) were opposed by Iran and Iraq's Shi'a chauvinists. They attest to his desire to defeat Da'ish, end the sectarian fighting, repair relations with the Sunnis and bring them back into the fold, limit Iranian influence in Iraq, and expand Iraq's relationship with the United States—exactly our goals in Iraq as well. While Abadi may not be perfect, he was an inspired choice for prime minister and as many Iraqi leaders point out (some as praise, others as condemnation) if Abadi cannot make Iraq work, then probably no one can.

But Abadi needs help. He is a good man in a weak position. He is opposed by a number of important Shi'a leaders aligned with Iran, while most Sunni, Shi'a and even Kurdish leaders fear that he is too weak to succeed and so have not been willing to exert themselves on his behalf—creating a vicious cycle. He is going to have to get strong support by an important external power to reverse that perverse situation. There is no question that the United States could play that role, but doing so is going to mean committing to Iraq in a way that the Obama administration has never been willing to do more than rhetorically.

The events at Tikrit have created an opportunity, a moment when various Iraqi political leaders are reassessing their calculation of the correlation of forces in Iraq. The Iranians do not look quite as strong as they once did, and the Americans suddenly look like they might regain their 2003-2009 form. But this moment will not last forever. What Iraqis are looking for is whether the United States will sustain its commitment to Iraq, and will do so both for the duration of the fight against Da'ish and after.

Iraqis are many things, but forgetful is not one of them. They all remember the disastrous American disengagement from Iraq that began in 2010 as the Obama administration did everything it could to wash its hands of Iraq. It was that disengagement that led in a straight line to the resumption of the current civil war. If the United States is going to abandon Iraq again as soon as Da'ish is defeated, the vast majority of Iraqis are likely to conclude that the country will break down all over again at that point, and so it would be foolish of them to do anything now other than prepare for when that day comes. It is precisely that bet-hedging that produced the return to civil war in Iraq in the first place (and historically always has in civil wars all across the world). It is why the "moral hazard" argument trotted out by the Obama administration to justify their political decision to disengage from Iraq was always belied by both the history of Iraq and the history of civil wars. It was proven disastrously false in June 2014.

But if the United States is going to learn that lesson rather than repeat it, we are going to have to make a long-term commitment to a real partnership with Iraq. The kind of partnership that the Obama administration has talked about endlessly but done almost nothing to realize. Now is the time to make good on that promise.

If Prime Minister Abadi is going to succeed, he is going to need to be able to convince other Iraqis, both Sunni and Shi'a, that he has strong American backing and an enduring American commitment to help Iraq rebuild its security forces, maintain the security of all Iraqis (and long after Da'ish is gone), reform its governmental structure, and begin to provide goods and services to the Iraqi people.

What Abadi needs from the visit

Prime Minister Abadi's visit to the White House thus comes at a critical moment—one where Iran's allies have been taken down several pegs and all Iraqis are looking to see what kind of a commitment the United States is willing to make to actually back Maliki. If all he gets is a warm smile and a photo-op, the moment will be lost. There is a lot that could help him; here is a quick way to think about it:

Additional military assistance

It is largely correct that, as former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel argued, the Iraqis are getting everything they need militarily. But that's beside the point. Right now, Iraqi Shi'a widely believe that Iran has been providing them with everything they need militarily and the United States has been stingily doling out only tiny amounts only when Iraq is desperate. Abadi needs to be able to go to other Iraqi leaders and say, in effect, 'The Americans are ready to be generous with their military assistance—so generous that we don't necessarily need the Iranians.' This actually isn't hard given how much more the United States has to give than Iran, how much is already in the pipeline, and how much Iraq needs. If the president could simply announce a variety of new arms sales—preferably to be paid at a later date when Iraq's finances are in better shape (see below)—from small arms to additional MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles), it would go a long way to making that case.

Political assistance

This is critical. There are two things that Abadi needs. Unfortunately he does not seem willing to acknowledge either. The first is help and "encouragement" to expand his staff. This may seem stunning, but right now, Abadi has a tiny little group of people he relies on to run the Iraqi government. It is perhaps a few dozen at most, to do what most countries have thousands for. This many people, no matter how capable they may be, are far, far too few to actually get things done—and these people are obscenely overworked and sleep-deprived. It is a major reason that Abadi is punching below his weight and failing to get things done. He needs American assistance identifying additional personnel and building out a staff that can actually move the rusty wheels of the Iraqi government.

The second, and even more important political task is for the United States to take a more active role in political reconciliation. Simply put, Iraq's Sunni community is badly fragmented—at least as much as they were in 2007-2008, if not more so. They will not be able to come together and negotiate a new power-sharing arrangement that could produce a stable Iraq and end the civil war. Someone is going to have to help them, if not in effect do it for them. Right now, Prime Minister Abadi hopes to do this himself. It is a noble idea, but it is already failing and seems unlikely to work. It would be far, far better to allow Ambassador Jones to play this role instead—speaking to scores of Sunni leaders to determine the minimum necessary requirements of the Sunni community as a whole and acting as their surrogate in negotiations with Prime Minister Abadi or other moderate Shi'a leaders. This is how the United States ended the civil war in Iraq in 2008, with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his team playing precisely that role. Again, it would be nice if Prime Minister Abadi could handle this himself, but the evidence suggests that it is just not possible because of Sunni distrust of the Shi'a, even Abadi. This is an absolutely critical area where the United States has to convince Prime Minister Abadi to let us help him.

One last point on political assistance deserves mention. Prime Minister Abadi is likely to ask President Obama for help with Iraq's Sunni neighbors—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey. Iraqi prime ministers have been understandably asking the same for over a decade. While the United States should, of course, be willing to help Iraq here, what the president needs to tell the prime minister very directly is that there is no way that the United States is going to change the perspectives—let alone the policies—of any of these states until Iraq's Sunni community feels comfortable with the political future of Iraq. THAT, not what the United States tells them, is their key consideration in Iraq. And consequently, until there is meaningful political reconciliation between Sunni and Shi'a in Iraq, all the American jawboning and pressure in the world are not going to do a jot of good. And that too should make him willing to accept an expanded American role in that process.

Economic assistance

Here as well, there is a great deal that the United States can and should do. First, Iraq is suffering mightily from the twin blows of low oil prices and the cost of waging a war against Da'ish. Days after the Abadi-Obama meeting, Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari will appeal to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help in enabling Iraq to meet its immediate financial problems (including a $21 billion budget deficit). Full-throated American support coupled with creative financial assistance with the international financial institutions will be very important to Iraq—and very helpful in demonstrating both America's commitment to Iraq, and the myriad ways that the United States can help Iraq and Iran simply cannot.

In that sense, now would be a great moment to announce a major new program of American economic assistance to Iraq. Some of this could and should be direct aid to alleviate some of the economic problems Iraqis are suffering right now as a result of the low oil prices and costs of the civil war. The Iraqis desperately need help with agriculture reform, educational expansion and reform, infrastructure repair, financial sector reform, and capacity building at every level of governance and regulation. Much of this assistance could come in the form of American know-how (and perhaps some short-term financing) coupled with long-term Iraqi financing once oil prices rebound. That said, it is important to note that several major recent polls have now shown American public support for doing more in both Iraq and Syria, including taking very costly steps like committing ground troops. Congress too seems quite willing to appropriate funds for Iraq and Syria as part of the campaign against Da'ish. Thus, there is no reason to believe that the public or the Congress would balk at a new aid package for Iraq.

The bottom line, of course, is that Iraq needs just about everything. Because of the fear of Da'ish, the American people and Congress appear ready to pay more to stabilize Iraq, and the events on the ground—from the accession of Haidar al-Abadi to the recent victory at Tikrit—have created a remarkable opportunity for the United States to secure both its short and long term goals in Iraq. But, as always, doing so is not going to be easy. It is going to require an effort on our part. We are going to have to commit additional aid and assistance to Iraq, both to enable Prime Minister Abadi to advance his agenda (which is our agenda too) and to give American diplomats and generals leverage of their own to complement Abadi's efforts. As part of that, we are going to have to convince Abadi to let us help him put his own house in order, build a staff that can run the country, and allow Ambassador Jones to act as a surrogate for the fissiparous Sunni leadership. That won't be easy, but it will be much easier if the prime minister comes away convinced that he can rely on the United States to be steadfast, committed and generous in a way that we simply have not been for the past five years.

Authors

Tomorrow, Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi will meet with President Obama for the first time as prime minister of Iraq. For the past 12 years, there has hardly been an occasion when such a meeting between the U.S. president and the Iraqi prime minister did not come at an important time, but this meeting comes at a watershed moment. Iraq could move in many possible directions, most bad, but some potentially quite good. It is absolutely critical that the Obama administration grasps this opportunity to put Iraq firmly on the right track.

The Tikrit victory

A lot has happened in Iraq recently, much of it well-covered by the international media, at least in its immediate dimensions.

First and foremost was the liberation of Tikrit. As I noted in a post soon after the battle was joined, the most important thing to understand about the battle for Tikrit is that it was planned and initially executed almost entirely by Iraq's Shi'a militias and their Iranian advisors. The militia leaders did not even notify the Iraqi government of their intended attack on Tikrit until six days before it commenced, and offered to allow government forces to participate only on condition that the United States was excluded. Prime Minister Abadi did what he had to do, committing small numbers of troops to the fight and publicly taking ownership of the operation so as to not look irrelevant in his own country.

But then, the best thing of all happened: the militias were stymied by Da'ish fighters, prevented from clearing the city. The government turned to the United States for air support to break the deadlock and the United States, in the persons of CENTCOM Commander General Lloyd Austin and Ambassador Stuart Jones, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, agreed to provide everything the Iraqis needed, on condition that the militias back off. This was exactly the right move and the Obama administration deserves credit for seizing the opportunity.

Best of all, within days of the start of U.S. airstrikes, Da'ish was driven from Tikrit. As General Austin and Ambassador Jones (among others) argued, this has begun to change the narrative in Iraq in important ways. For the militia leaders and their Iranian advisors, the whole point of the assault was to demonstrate that they had complete freedom of action and could liberate even large Sunni cities without American support. If they could do so, it would reinforce to Iraqis that they did not need the United States, and the United States could not do anything to stop the Iranian-backed militias. The fact that they failed to take Tikrit after a month, but the U.S. airstrikes resulted in its fall in less than a week has reversed the narrative. While it is just unclear what the average Iraqi believes right now, Iraqi elites—Sunni and Shi'a—increasingly recognize that the Iranians and their allies cannot do what the Americans supporting Iraqi Security Force (ISF) units could. That is huge.

The shift to Anbar

There is some more good news. It looks like Baghdad has chosen not to try to liberate Mosul next, but will instead shift its focus to Anbar to clear much or all of that western province before turning back north. That matters because, as I and any number of other commentators have noted, taking Mosul will be a major challenge, both militarily and politically. Mosul is a massive, multi-ethnic city and the crown jewel of the Da'ish empire, such as it is. Taking it could easily prove more difficult than Tikrit.

The cities and towns of Anbar, in contrast, tend to be smaller and far more homogeneous. It is also likely to be more difficult for the Shi'a militias to get involved there because they won't have much (if any) support from the local populace. Instead, they will be wholly dependent on the government for sustainment, which will allow Baghdad to simply cut off their supplies, as it seems to have eventually done to the militias in the Tikrit fighting.

Going after the smaller cities of Anbar should allow Iraqi army formations to gain valuable combat experience, build their cohesion and leadership, and secure the trust of Iraq's Sunni community. In each operation, with American support, Iraqi security forces can work out both the military and political kinks in their methodologies, and do so in smaller, more easily-managed operations. Hopefully, they can create a sense of momentum that will bolster Prime Minister Abadi and reassure the Sunni community that its liberation is inevitable, while simultaneously giving Sunni Iraqis the confidence that when the ISF comes to town, they can feel safe under its protection. That is critically important given the widespread fear among Sunni Iraqis of the Shi'a militias, which have conducted ethnic cleansing and inflicted punitive retribution in some, perhaps many, of the areas they have retaken from Da'ish.

Refocusing on the long term

As I have warned elsewhere the greatest ongoing problem with the current U.S. approach to Iraq is its continuing focus on short-term operations and neglect of the long-term question of Iraq's political future. This is not an academic question that can be left to some future date. It is the single most important question facing Iraq today, and if it is not addressed properly, it will unravel all of the near-term political and military gains won by Iraqis and Americans.

Without rehearsing the entire issue, the question that every Iraqi wants to know is what kind of Iraq will exist after Da'ish is driven from Iraq—something all Iraqis now see as merely a matter of time. We need to remember that it was former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's subversion of Iraqi democracy and alienation of the Sunni community that caused the state to collapse again, allowed Da'ish to overrun the northwest, and plunged the country back into civil war. If there is not a new power-sharing arrangement among Sunnis and Shi'a that will make the Sunnis feel comfortable rejoining the government—one that assures them of political weight and economic benefits commensurate with their demographic strength, and that will make them feel safe from violent repression by the government—they will continue to fight, with or without Da'ish. As I have warned, in those circumstances, military victory over Da'ish will not end the fighting, it will enflame it.

Here the United States has some important things going for it. First, as I noted above, the United States actually has quite a good team working on Iraq. Ambassador Jones has proven to be smart, energetic and able, and he has some good support. Generals Austin, Terry and Bednarek have similarly handled the military situation with care and skill. And perhaps of greatest importance, we have Prime Minister Abadi himself, whom a wide swathe of Iraqis consider (probably correctly) to be Iraq's last, best hope.

The importance of helping Prime Minister Abadi succeed

Time and again, Abadi has taken difficult, risky steps to pull Iraq in the right direction. His decisions to disband the Office of the Commander in Chief, sack the worst of the political generals appointed by Maliki, accept American military advisers, oppose Hadi al-Ameri (Iran's most important Iraqi ally) as minister of the interior, strike two deals with the Kurds over oil, reach out to Iraq's Sunni leadership, arm Sunni fighters, and request American air support at Tikrit over the objections of the Shi'a militia leaders, all speak to his determination to do the right thing. Every one of those decisions (and a range of others) were opposed by Iran and Iraq's Shi'a chauvinists. They attest to his desire to defeat Da'ish, end the sectarian fighting, repair relations with the Sunnis and bring them back into the fold, limit Iranian influence in Iraq, and expand Iraq's relationship with the United States—exactly our goals in Iraq as well. While Abadi may not be perfect, he was an inspired choice for prime minister and as many Iraqi leaders point out (some as praise, others as condemnation) if Abadi cannot make Iraq work, then probably no one can.

But Abadi needs help. He is a good man in a weak position. He is opposed by a number of important Shi'a leaders aligned with Iran, while most Sunni, Shi'a and even Kurdish leaders fear that he is too weak to succeed and so have not been willing to exert themselves on his behalf—creating a vicious cycle. He is going to have to get strong support by an important external power to reverse that perverse situation. There is no question that the United States could play that role, but doing so is going to mean committing to Iraq in a way that the Obama administration has never been willing to do more than rhetorically.

The events at Tikrit have created an opportunity, a moment when various Iraqi political leaders are reassessing their calculation of the correlation of forces in Iraq. The Iranians do not look quite as strong as they once did, and the Americans suddenly look like they might regain their 2003-2009 form. But this moment will not last forever. What Iraqis are looking for is whether the United States will sustain its commitment to Iraq, and will do so both for the duration of the fight against Da'ish and after.

Iraqis are many things, but forgetful is not one of them. They all remember the disastrous American disengagement from Iraq that began in 2010 as the Obama administration did everything it could to wash its hands of Iraq. It was that disengagement that led in a straight line to the resumption of the current civil war. If the United States is going to abandon Iraq again as soon as Da'ish is defeated, the vast majority of Iraqis are likely to conclude that the country will break down all over again at that point, and so it would be foolish of them to do anything now other than prepare for when that day comes. It is precisely that bet-hedging that produced the return to civil war in Iraq in the first place (and historically always has in civil wars all across the world). It is why the "moral hazard" argument trotted out by the Obama administration to justify their political decision to disengage from Iraq was always belied by both the history of Iraq and the history of civil wars. It was proven disastrously false in June 2014.

But if the United States is going to learn that lesson rather than repeat it, we are going to have to make a long-term commitment to a real partnership with Iraq. The kind of partnership that the Obama administration has talked about endlessly but done almost nothing to realize. Now is the time to make good on that promise.

If Prime Minister Abadi is going to succeed, he is going to need to be able to convince other Iraqis, both Sunni and Shi'a, that he has strong American backing and an enduring American commitment to help Iraq rebuild its security forces, maintain the security of all Iraqis (and long after Da'ish is gone), reform its governmental structure, and begin to provide goods and services to the Iraqi people.

What Abadi needs from the visit

Prime Minister Abadi's visit to the White House thus comes at a critical moment—one where Iran's allies have been taken down several pegs and all Iraqis are looking to see what kind of a commitment the United States is willing to make to actually back Maliki. If all he gets is a warm smile and a photo-op, the moment will be lost. There is a lot that could help him; here is a quick way to think about it:

Additional military assistance

It is largely correct that, as former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel argued, the Iraqis are getting everything they need militarily. But that's beside the point. Right now, Iraqi Shi'a widely believe that Iran has been providing them with everything they need militarily and the United States has been stingily doling out only tiny amounts only when Iraq is desperate. Abadi needs to be able to go to other Iraqi leaders and say, in effect, 'The Americans are ready to be generous with their military assistance—so generous that we don't necessarily need the Iranians.' This actually isn't hard given how much more the United States has to give than Iran, how much is already in the pipeline, and how much Iraq needs. If the president could simply announce a variety of new arms sales—preferably to be paid at a later date when Iraq's finances are in better shape (see below)—from small arms to additional MRAPs (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles), it would go a long way to making that case.

Political assistance

This is critical. There are two things that Abadi needs. Unfortunately he does not seem willing to acknowledge either. The first is help and "encouragement" to expand his staff. This may seem stunning, but right now, Abadi has a tiny little group of people he relies on to run the Iraqi government. It is perhaps a few dozen at most, to do what most countries have thousands for. This many people, no matter how capable they may be, are far, far too few to actually get things done—and these people are obscenely overworked and sleep-deprived. It is a major reason that Abadi is punching below his weight and failing to get things done. He needs American assistance identifying additional personnel and building out a staff that can actually move the rusty wheels of the Iraqi government.

The second, and even more important political task is for the United States to take a more active role in political reconciliation. Simply put, Iraq's Sunni community is badly fragmented—at least as much as they were in 2007-2008, if not more so. They will not be able to come together and negotiate a new power-sharing arrangement that could produce a stable Iraq and end the civil war. Someone is going to have to help them, if not in effect do it for them. Right now, Prime Minister Abadi hopes to do this himself. It is a noble idea, but it is already failing and seems unlikely to work. It would be far, far better to allow Ambassador Jones to play this role instead—speaking to scores of Sunni leaders to determine the minimum necessary requirements of the Sunni community as a whole and acting as their surrogate in negotiations with Prime Minister Abadi or other moderate Shi'a leaders. This is how the United States ended the civil war in Iraq in 2008, with Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his team playing precisely that role. Again, it would be nice if Prime Minister Abadi could handle this himself, but the evidence suggests that it is just not possible because of Sunni distrust of the Shi'a, even Abadi. This is an absolutely critical area where the United States has to convince Prime Minister Abadi to let us help him.

One last point on political assistance deserves mention. Prime Minister Abadi is likely to ask President Obama for help with Iraq's Sunni neighbors—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey. Iraqi prime ministers have been understandably asking the same for over a decade. While the United States should, of course, be willing to help Iraq here, what the president needs to tell the prime minister very directly is that there is no way that the United States is going to change the perspectives—let alone the policies—of any of these states until Iraq's Sunni community feels comfortable with the political future of Iraq. THAT, not what the United States tells them, is their key consideration in Iraq. And consequently, until there is meaningful political reconciliation between Sunni and Shi'a in Iraq, all the American jawboning and pressure in the world are not going to do a jot of good. And that too should make him willing to accept an expanded American role in that process.

Economic assistance

Here as well, there is a great deal that the United States can and should do. First, Iraq is suffering mightily from the twin blows of low oil prices and the cost of waging a war against Da'ish. Days after the Abadi-Obama meeting, Iraqi Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari will appeal to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) for help in enabling Iraq to meet its immediate financial problems (including a $21 billion budget deficit). Full-throated American support coupled with creative financial assistance with the international financial institutions will be very important to Iraq—and very helpful in demonstrating both America's commitment to Iraq, and the myriad ways that the United States can help Iraq and Iran simply cannot.

In that sense, now would be a great moment to announce a major new program of American economic assistance to Iraq. Some of this could and should be direct aid to alleviate some of the economic problems Iraqis are suffering right now as a result of the low oil prices and costs of the civil war. The Iraqis desperately need help with agriculture reform, educational expansion and reform, infrastructure repair, financial sector reform, and capacity building at every level of governance and regulation. Much of this assistance could come in the form of American know-how (and perhaps some short-term financing) coupled with long-term Iraqi financing once oil prices rebound. That said, it is important to note that several major recent polls have now shown American public support for doing more in both Iraq and Syria, including taking very costly steps like committing ground troops. Congress too seems quite willing to appropriate funds for Iraq and Syria as part of the campaign against Da'ish. Thus, there is no reason to believe that the public or the Congress would balk at a new aid package for Iraq.

The bottom line, of course, is that Iraq needs just about everything. Because of the fear of Da'ish, the American people and Congress appear ready to pay more to stabilize Iraq, and the events on the ground—from the accession of Haidar al-Abadi to the recent victory at Tikrit—have created a remarkable opportunity for the United States to secure both its short and long term goals in Iraq. But, as always, doing so is not going to be easy. It is going to require an effort on our part. We are going to have to commit additional aid and assistance to Iraq, both to enable Prime Minister Abadi to advance his agenda (which is our agenda too) and to give American diplomats and generals leverage of their own to complement Abadi's efforts. As part of that, we are going to have to convince Abadi to let us help him put his own house in order, build a staff that can run the country, and allow Ambassador Jones to act as a surrogate for the fissiparous Sunni leadership. That won't be easy, but it will be much easier if the prime minister comes away convinced that he can rely on the United States to be steadfast, committed and generous in a way that we simply have not been for the past five years.

Authors

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http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/27-yemen-houthis-gcc-saudia-arabia?rssid=pollackk{F22B2AE5-74FC-4818-9198-880B7BF1225E}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/87755426/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~Around-the-halls-The-developing-situation-in-YemenAround the halls: The developing situation in Yemen

In the wake of continuing chaos in Yemen, and the decision of a ten-country coalition—led by Saudi Arabia—to conduct airstrikes against Houthi fighters in Yemen, Brookings experts had a candid dialogue about the developing situation. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
This is an extraordinary step:

A direct attack by Sunni Arab states on an Iranian-backed militia;

The first time the GCC has taken military action outside its own membership; and

The return of Egypt to fighting on Yemeni territory.

By the way, Bruce, didn’t we have a conversation just recently about the prospect of Egypt providing an expeditionary force for the GCC states? It feels momentous for the trajectory of the region. Some questions:

Could this campaign distract Sunni governments, and perhaps the United States, from the fight vs ISIS in Iraq and Jordan?

Will Iran double down on the Houthis?

What will AQAP do?

Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy and Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and Director, Intelligence Project, Foreign Policy program:
Air strikes will not defeat the Houthis, and they are too late to save Aden. Are the Saudis prepared to put boots on the ground? Is Cairo?

Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
That's the danger! Their boots on the ground won't solve the problem either—it will just bog them down in a Yemeni quagmire.

Bruce Riedel:
What are the implications for a nuclear deal? Can you sign a deal with Tehran while your Sunni allies are at war with Iran's proxy in Yemen? And you are giving their Iraqi Shia allies air support in Tikrit?

Tamara Cofman Wittes:
President Obama last August cited Yemen as a model for the United States’ intended counterterrorism approach in Iraq. Maybe the "Yemen model" has a different meaning now: cede the territory to those most willing to bleed for it.

I really wonder how AQAP plays this. Saudi intervention seems like a golden opportunity for them.

Daniel L. Byman, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program :
I'll add to this only that I can't figure out what the Islamic State presence is in Yemen. If big, AQAP has a problem in that the Islamic State will push the sectarian button better, so AQAP will have a serious local rival.

Salman Shaikh, Fellow, Director, Brookings Doha Center and Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
I've said that the United States has the difficult job, like it or not, to play both referee between Saudi and Iran and ally to its traditional friends in the region. Not easy, I know, but there should have been a much greater effort earlier to push back on Iran's hegemonic ambitions in the region. Saudis and others have been warning for quite some time. Instead, the United States is yet again a "reactive" Middle East power, supporting different (opposing) folks in different places.

I also wonder how secure is Saudi Arabia? Houthis may carry out their threats to attack Saudi. If this carries on, we must keep an eye on dissent within Saudi.

Neither do I rule out Sunnis dissent within Iran's western regions. There have been signs of that recently.

Saudi, I was told, is looking to build a very broad regional coalition to counter Iranian expansionism, which includes Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt.

I also see that 10 countries have pledged support to the Saudis for Yemen, including Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, in addition to Egypt and Pakistan. The Saudis will have to pay for them all.

The Yemeni conflict is now clearly part of a broader regional conflagration. For that reason there is an urgent need to plug the Syrian volcano. Renewed focus on a Syrian a Syrian political transition can contribute to de-escalating regional tensions.

Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
I take a different position than Salman, both with respect to the characterization of Iranian ambitions and the criticism of the Obama administration. As Bruce Riedel has written, Iran's involvement in Yemen is marginal and opportunistic. They didn't invent the Houthi uprising and their investment has been relatively small scale in comparison to other conflicts. Which is why you have never seen a Qassem Soleimani selfie from Aden or anywhere in the vicinity, and you never will. Tehran's real interests lie elsewhere, in Iraq and Syria. I would imagine they will aim to continue to exploit what is likely to remain a very unsettled situation in Yemen. But that hardly qualifies as hegemonic.

As for the United States, I don't know of an American administration that has been anything other than reactive vis-à-vis Yemen. Unfortunately (especially for Yemenis) I think Yemen will simply never rise to the level of a priority that commands proactive American intercession—except if the threat of AQAP is resurgent, which of course may be an inadvertent outcome of the GCC strikes.

My guess is that the Obama administration sees a net benefit in enabling the Saudis to flex their muscles on an issue which is existential, or close to it, for Riyadh but relatively low-priority for the rest of the world. Heck, Washington may have even encouraged this outcome: let the Gulf vent its spleen about the cozy conversations between Secretary John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an arena where they cannot do much additional harm to core United States interests in the region. Meanwhile, the nuclear talks will go on—even if the Iranians can't close the deal—and Washington will focus its energies on IS and Iraq, in parallel to Iran's campaign there.

In my view, the real problem is that Saudi interventions across the region—military and financial—are no less forceful than those of Iran, and they are not inherently stabilizing, except perhaps in the short run.

I can't yet puzzle out how this is likely to impact the Iranian nuclear talks. I'm tempted to say not at all; the negotiations are really silo-ed on both sides, and if they can finally get to a credible formula, I think that producing a somewhat general, possibly unwritten "political framework" is not a terribly high hurdle. There would still be plenty of time for this to crash and burn before June 30th. On the other hand, the Iranian leadership sees the nuclear issue as firmly enmeshed within a broader web of United States efforts to undermine the regime, and it seems conceivable that the United States-sanctified Saudi attack on an Iranian client/ally — undertaken at the precise moment that Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani had to yield the Tikrit battle to United States air strikes would intensify Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's hesitation about accepting a deal that the hard-liners in his security bureaucracy will see as a capitulation to the West.

Shibley Telhami, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, Foreign Policy program:
One thing though to keep in mind, separate from the big unknown (and potentially disastrous) consequences for Yemen. This is a huge development for Arab politics that will test the bargain that the Saudis sought at the outset of the Arab Uprisings: luring Morocco and Jordan into a support relationship with the GCC: money for security support. That now includes Egypt (and a lot of symbolic Sunni countries such as Sudan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority). There is no doubt the Saudis took the lead on this, that they consolidated the support of GCC (with the exception of Oman) which has propelled them into uncharted leadership territory. Regardless of how it all ends in Yemen, the path will be bloody with a lot of unintended consequences. If ground forces will ultimately be needed from Egypt and Jordan, this could obviously have consequences well beyond Gulf.

The Iranian issue will become more prominent, although I doubt Iran will do any more than provide some backing from the outside in the early stages. But it sets up a tone in the Saudi-Iranian competition that will have impact elsewhere.

The Saudis may also feel that they need to start showing that they are a serious military player; despite investing tens of billions on arms, few people in the region take their power seriously and many wonder what they have done with these resources. They may feel this is an opportunity to register their arrival— but if they are seen to fail, they stand to lose a great deal.

As far as the Egyptian role, it is already generating a heated discussion among Egyptian commentators, for and against, with comparison to Egypt's intervention in the 1960s.

Bruce Riedel:
The Saudis have told me the coalition includes Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan and Pakistan. Notably absent is Oman, which has a border with Yemen.

Aircraft from Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Sudan, Morocco and Jordan are part of the air coalition with RSAF. Absent are Pakistan and Egypt so far.

Saudi sources are adamant they don't need foreign ground troops, they can do the ground war alone; 150,000 Army, SANG and MOI troops available they claim. Of course, they don't want to admit Pakistan turned them down two weeks ago.

Operational command of the coalition is in the hands of the Minister of Defense Prince Muhammad bin Salman, 34, the King’s son. He toured the Saudi border provinces over the weekend to prepare the operation.

Among the many odd aspects of this story is the Saudi announcement. Has any country ever announced it is going to war using as its spokesman an ambassador stationed in a foreign country thousands of miles away? Why not the King, Crown Prince or Foreign Minister speaking in Riyadh to the Saudi people? So far they have not spoken.

The Omani absence is also driven by the Sultan’s health question. Although he returned to Muscat on Monday after months in Germany, he has yet to speak to the Omani people. Reports that his health is fully restored and he is cured of cancer are probably wishful thinking.

Pakistan’s absence is also notable. Officially the Pakistani government is “considering” the Saudi appeal for assistance. Like Oman Pakistan shares a border with Iran and is more cautious about how far to jump on the Saudi bandwagon.

In the wake of continuing chaos in Yemen, and the decision of a ten-country coalition—led by Saudi Arabia—to conduct airstrikes against Houthi fighters in Yemen, Brookings experts had a candid dialogue about the developing situation. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

Tamara Cofman Wittes, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
This is an extraordinary step:

A direct attack by Sunni Arab states on an Iranian-backed militia;

The first time the GCC has taken military action outside its own membership; and

The return of Egypt to fighting on Yemeni territory.

By the way, Bruce, didn’t we have a conversation just recently about the prospect of Egypt providing an expeditionary force for the GCC states? It feels momentous for the trajectory of the region. Some questions:

Could this campaign distract Sunni governments, and perhaps the United States, from the fight vs ISIS in Iraq and Jordan?

Will Iran double down on the Houthis?

What will AQAP do?

Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy and Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence and Director, Intelligence Project, Foreign Policy program:
Air strikes will not defeat the Houthis, and they are too late to save Aden. Are the Saudis prepared to put boots on the ground? Is Cairo?

Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
That's the danger! Their boots on the ground won't solve the problem either—it will just bog them down in a Yemeni quagmire.

Bruce Riedel:
What are the implications for a nuclear deal? Can you sign a deal with Tehran while your Sunni allies are at war with Iran's proxy in Yemen? And you are giving their Iraqi Shia allies air support in Tikrit?

Tamara Cofman Wittes:
President Obama last August cited Yemen as a model for the United States’ intended counterterrorism approach in Iraq. Maybe the "Yemen model" has a different meaning now: cede the territory to those most willing to bleed for it.

I really wonder how AQAP plays this. Saudi intervention seems like a golden opportunity for them.

Daniel L. Byman, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program :
I'll add to this only that I can't figure out what the Islamic State presence is in Yemen. If big, AQAP has a problem in that the Islamic State will push the sectarian button better, so AQAP will have a serious local rival.

Salman Shaikh, Fellow, Director, Brookings Doha Center and Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
I've said that the United States has the difficult job, like it or not, to play both referee between Saudi and Iran and ally to its traditional friends in the region. Not easy, I know, but there should have been a much greater effort earlier to push back on Iran's hegemonic ambitions in the region. Saudis and others have been warning for quite some time. Instead, the United States is yet again a "reactive" Middle East power, supporting different (opposing) folks in different places.

I also wonder how secure is Saudi Arabia? Houthis may carry out their threats to attack Saudi. If this carries on, we must keep an eye on dissent within Saudi.

Neither do I rule out Sunnis dissent within Iran's western regions. There have been signs of that recently.

Saudi, I was told, is looking to build a very broad regional coalition to counter Iranian expansionism, which includes Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt.

I also see that 10 countries have pledged support to the Saudis for Yemen, including Jordan, Sudan, Morocco, in addition to Egypt and Pakistan. The Saudis will have to pay for them all.

The Yemeni conflict is now clearly part of a broader regional conflagration. For that reason there is an urgent need to plug the Syrian volcano. Renewed focus on a Syrian a Syrian political transition can contribute to de-escalating regional tensions.

Suzanne Maloney, Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy program:
I take a different position than Salman, both with respect to the characterization of Iranian ambitions and the criticism of the Obama administration. As Bruce Riedel has written, Iran's involvement in Yemen is marginal and opportunistic. They didn't invent the Houthi uprising and their investment has been relatively small scale in comparison to other conflicts. Which is why you have never seen a Qassem Soleimani selfie from Aden or anywhere in the vicinity, and you never will. Tehran's real interests lie elsewhere, in Iraq and Syria. I would imagine they will aim to continue to exploit what is likely to remain a very unsettled situation in Yemen. But that hardly qualifies as hegemonic.

As for the United States, I don't know of an American administration that has been anything other than reactive vis-à-vis Yemen. Unfortunately (especially for Yemenis) I think Yemen will simply never rise to the level of a priority that commands proactive American intercession—except if the threat of AQAP is resurgent, which of course may be an inadvertent outcome of the GCC strikes.

My guess is that the Obama administration sees a net benefit in enabling the Saudis to flex their muscles on an issue which is existential, or close to it, for Riyadh but relatively low-priority for the rest of the world. Heck, Washington may have even encouraged this outcome: let the Gulf vent its spleen about the cozy conversations between Secretary John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an arena where they cannot do much additional harm to core United States interests in the region. Meanwhile, the nuclear talks will go on—even if the Iranians can't close the deal—and Washington will focus its energies on IS and Iraq, in parallel to Iran's campaign there.

In my view, the real problem is that Saudi interventions across the region—military and financial—are no less forceful than those of Iran, and they are not inherently stabilizing, except perhaps in the short run.

I can't yet puzzle out how this is likely to impact the Iranian nuclear talks. I'm tempted to say not at all; the negotiations are really silo-ed on both sides, and if they can finally get to a credible formula, I think that producing a somewhat general, possibly unwritten "political framework" is not a terribly high hurdle. There would still be plenty of time for this to crash and burn before June 30th. On the other hand, the Iranian leadership sees the nuclear issue as firmly enmeshed within a broader web of United States efforts to undermine the regime, and it seems conceivable that the United States-sanctified Saudi attack on an Iranian client/ally — undertaken at the precise moment that Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani had to yield the Tikrit battle to United States air strikes would intensify Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's hesitation about accepting a deal that the hard-liners in his security bureaucracy will see as a capitulation to the West.

Shibley Telhami, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Center for Middle East Policy, Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World, Foreign Policy program:
One thing though to keep in mind, separate from the big unknown (and potentially disastrous) consequences for Yemen. This is a huge development for Arab politics that will test the bargain that the Saudis sought at the outset of the Arab Uprisings: luring Morocco and Jordan into a support relationship with the GCC: money for security support. That now includes Egypt (and a lot of symbolic Sunni countries such as Sudan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Authority). There is no doubt the Saudis took the lead on this, that they consolidated the support of GCC (with the exception of Oman) which has propelled them into uncharted leadership territory. Regardless of how it all ends in Yemen, the path will be bloody with a lot of unintended consequences. If ground forces will ultimately be needed from Egypt and Jordan, this could obviously have consequences well beyond Gulf.

The Iranian issue will become more prominent, although I doubt Iran will do any more than provide some backing from the outside in the early stages. But it sets up a tone in the Saudi-Iranian competition that will have impact elsewhere.

The Saudis may also feel that they need to start showing that they are a serious military player; despite investing tens of billions on arms, few people in the region take their power seriously and many wonder what they have done with these resources. They may feel this is an opportunity to register their arrival— but if they are seen to fail, they stand to lose a great deal.

As far as the Egyptian role, it is already generating a heated discussion among Egyptian commentators, for and against, with comparison to Egypt's intervention in the 1960s.

Bruce Riedel:
The Saudis have told me the coalition includes Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Jordan and Pakistan. Notably absent is Oman, which has a border with Yemen.

Aircraft from Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Sudan, Morocco and Jordan are part of the air coalition with RSAF. Absent are Pakistan and Egypt so far.

Saudi sources are adamant they don't need foreign ground troops, they can do the ground war alone; 150,000 Army, SANG and MOI troops available they claim. Of course, they don't want to admit Pakistan turned them down two weeks ago.

Operational command of the coalition is in the hands of the Minister of Defense Prince Muhammad bin Salman, 34, the King’s son. He toured the Saudi border provinces over the weekend to prepare the operation.

Among the many odd aspects of this story is the Saudi announcement. Has any country ever announced it is going to war using as its spokesman an ambassador stationed in a foreign country thousands of miles away? Why not the King, Crown Prince or Foreign Minister speaking in Riyadh to the Saudi people? So far they have not spoken.

The Omani absence is also driven by the Sultan’s health question. Although he returned to Muscat on Monday after months in Germany, he has yet to speak to the Omani people. Reports that his health is fully restored and he is cured of cancer are probably wishful thinking.

Pakistan’s absence is also notable. Officially the Pakistani government is “considering” the Saudi appeal for assistance. Like Oman Pakistan shares a border with Iran and is more cautious about how far to jump on the Saudi bandwagon.

Authors

]]>
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/26-pollack-iraq-tikrit-airstrikes-isis?rssid=pollackk{816FC78E-BDE2-45A2-A5F7-A1EFBF265D7B}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/87705534/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~Why-US-airstrikes-in-Tikrit-are-good-for-the-US-and-IraqWhy U.S. airstrikes in Tikrit are good for the U.S. and Iraq

The start of American air operations against Da'ish forces in Tikrit has generated a lot of concerns that this is another foolish move by which the United States is empowering Iran and its allied Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

In this one case, however, the exact opposite is true.

What is critical to understand about the Tikrit offensive is that it was meant to discredit the United States. Two weeks ago, an extremely high-ranking Iraqi official—a senior cabinet minister—told me that the operation was presented by Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, Iran's most important cat's paw in Iraq, to the Iraqi government six days before the start of the operation. At the time, he indicated that the various Shi'ite militias were going to launch the offensive against Tikrit with Iranian support, and he asked if the Iraqi government was interested in participating. He also made it clear that he and his compatriots did not want the United States to participate.

In other words, the Shi'ite militias and their Iranian backers devised this operation on their own; they intended to carry it out regardless of what the Iraqi government did and simply gave Baghdad the option of participating—but only at the price of excluding the Americans. It was an operation designed to demonstrate that the Shi'ite militias (and the forces at the disposal of the Shi'a-dominated government more broadly) were fully capable of liberating even core Sunni cities without the United States. It was intended to demonstrate that Iraq needs Iranian help, while American help was of secondary importance at best.

This seems to be why the offensive caught the United States by surprise—the Iraqi government did not know about it until the last minute and they were forced to keep the Americans in the dark or be shut out of the operation altogether. This was too dangerous for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who could not afford to have the Shi'ite militias and Iran liberate Tikrit from Da'ish WITHOUT Iraqi Security Force (ISF) participation. Doing so would have demonstrated that he is not fully in control of Iraq or the military campaign to liberate Iraq. Given his own problems with Iran and its Iraqi allies, that was something he just could not afford, and so he agreed to participate, rushed some ISF units north to take part in the offensive, and gave a send-off speech to the troops—all to try to take ownership of an operation conceived by the Shi'ite militias and Iran.

The great danger in all of this is that if the operation was a success, it would reinforce the narrative that Iran was Iraq's only real ally and the United States was both diffident and not terribly important. It would have further increased Iran's already extensive influence in Iraq and further diminished America's already damaged reputation. And early on, when the offensive seemed to be succeeding, this was exactly what Iraqis were saying. Indeed, the Shi'ite militias distributed all kinds of sophisticated media materials showing them feeding liberated Sunni children to demonstrate that they were welcomed by the Sunni populace and thus did not need the Americans even to reach out to the Sunnis.

Now, the sudden stalemate and the request for American airstrikes has given the United States the chance to reverse that narrative: to convince Iraqis that the Shi'ite militias cannot do it all on their own—or only with Iranian help—and that Iraq needs the United States because the United States has unique capabilities critical to Iraq's future security. It is also important for Prime Minister Abadi in giving him some room to maneuver and not reducing him to subservience to Iran and its allies among the Shi'ite militia leadership. What's more, if Tikrit is now liberated, Iraqis will all say that the Iranians failed, but the Americans succeeded.

Nothing could be more useful in starting to restore American influence. Indeed, that is precisely why the Shi'ite militias closest to Iran—Asaib ahl al-Haq, Khataib Hizballah, the Peace Brigades, and possibly the Badr Organization—all have either announced that they won't participate in the fight anymore or are considering withdrawing. They do not want to see the United States succeed where the Iranians alone failed, and they know that their own role could be crucial to the fighting. So rather than do what is best for Iraq, they are doing what is best for themselves and for Iran, even at the expense of what is best for Iraq.

And that is a golden opportunity for the United States.

Authors

The start of American air operations against Da'ish forces in Tikrit has generated a lot of concerns that this is another foolish move by which the United States is empowering Iran and its allied Shi'ite militias in Iraq.

In this one case, however, the exact opposite is true.

What is critical to understand about the Tikrit offensive is that it was meant to discredit the United States. Two weeks ago, an extremely high-ranking Iraqi official—a senior cabinet minister—told me that the operation was presented by Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, Iran's most important cat's paw in Iraq, to the Iraqi government six days before the start of the operation. At the time, he indicated that the various Shi'ite militias were going to launch the offensive against Tikrit with Iranian support, and he asked if the Iraqi government was interested in participating. He also made it clear that he and his compatriots did not want the United States to participate.

In other words, the Shi'ite militias and their Iranian backers devised this operation on their own; they intended to carry it out regardless of what the Iraqi government did and simply gave Baghdad the option of participating—but only at the price of excluding the Americans. It was an operation designed to demonstrate that the Shi'ite militias (and the forces at the disposal of the Shi'a-dominated government more broadly) were fully capable of liberating even core Sunni cities without the United States. It was intended to demonstrate that Iraq needs Iranian help, while American help was of secondary importance at best.

This seems to be why the offensive caught the United States by surprise—the Iraqi government did not know about it until the last minute and they were forced to keep the Americans in the dark or be shut out of the operation altogether. This was too dangerous for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who could not afford to have the Shi'ite militias and Iran liberate Tikrit from Da'ish WITHOUT Iraqi Security Force (ISF) participation. Doing so would have demonstrated that he is not fully in control of Iraq or the military campaign to liberate Iraq. Given his own problems with Iran and its Iraqi allies, that was something he just could not afford, and so he agreed to participate, rushed some ISF units north to take part in the offensive, and gave a send-off speech to the troops—all to try to take ownership of an operation conceived by the Shi'ite militias and Iran.

The great danger in all of this is that if the operation was a success, it would reinforce the narrative that Iran was Iraq's only real ally and the United States was both diffident and not terribly important. It would have further increased Iran's already extensive influence in Iraq and further diminished America's already damaged reputation. And early on, when the offensive seemed to be succeeding, this was exactly what Iraqis were saying. Indeed, the Shi'ite militias distributed all kinds of sophisticated media materials showing them feeding liberated Sunni children to demonstrate that they were welcomed by the Sunni populace and thus did not need the Americans even to reach out to the Sunnis.

Now, the sudden stalemate and the request for American airstrikes has given the United States the chance to reverse that narrative: to convince Iraqis that the Shi'ite militias cannot do it all on their own—or only with Iranian help—and that Iraq needs the United States because the United States has unique capabilities critical to Iraq's future security. It is also important for Prime Minister Abadi in giving him some room to maneuver and not reducing him to subservience to Iran and its allies among the Shi'ite militia leadership. What's more, if Tikrit is now liberated, Iraqis will all say that the Iranians failed, but the Americans succeeded.

Nothing could be more useful in starting to restore American influence. Indeed, that is precisely why the Shi'ite militias closest to Iran—Asaib ahl al-Haq, Khataib Hizballah, the Peace Brigades, and possibly the Badr Organization—all have either announced that they won't participate in the fight anymore or are considering withdrawing. They do not want to see the United States succeed where the Iranians alone failed, and they know that their own role could be crucial to the fighting. So rather than do what is best for Iraq, they are doing what is best for themselves and for Iran, even at the expense of what is best for Iraq.

The Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP) recently hosted an event titled “Yemen and Libya: The Middle East’s Other Civil Wars.” The event brought together a panel of experts on Yemen, Libya, and the broader region to discuss the rising violence and chaos in those two countries. Listen to what they had to say or read a transcript of the conversation here.

Pakistan is listed as one of the non-GCC countries that has joined in the coalition against the Houthis in Yemen. Bruce Riedel, director of The Intelligence Project at Brookings, wrote a piece for Al-Monitorexplaining Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s decision less than two weeks ago not to send troops to Saudi Arabia to help the Kingdom confront the rising Houthi threat on its southwestern border.

And following the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah earlier this year, which came on the heels of the resignation of Yemeni president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, Riedel declared in an op-ed in Al-Monitor that Yemen would be the “first priority for Saudi’s new King Salman.”

Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center, outlined how U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Yemen, and specifically its use of drones to target al-Qa’ida-linked terrorists, has contributed to Yemen’s instability in a recent interview on NPR.

Authors

Jennifer R. Williams

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Thu, 26 Mar 2015 09:36:00 -0400Jennifer R. Williams

The Center for Middle East Policy (CMEP) recently hosted an event titled “Yemen and Libya: The Middle East’s Other Civil Wars.” The event brought together a panel of experts on Yemen, Libya, and the broader region to discuss the rising violence and chaos in those two countries. Listen to what they had to say or read a transcript of the conversation here.

Pakistan is listed as one of the non-GCC countries that has joined in the coalition against the Houthis in Yemen. Bruce Riedel, director of The Intelligence Project at Brookings, wrote a piece for Al-Monitorexplaining Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s decision less than two weeks ago not to send troops to Saudi Arabia to help the Kingdom confront the rising Houthi threat on its southwestern border.

And following the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah earlier this year, which came on the heels of the resignation of Yemeni president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, Riedel declared in an op-ed in Al-Monitor that Yemen would be the “first priority for Saudi’s new King Salman.”

Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center, outlined how U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Yemen, and specifically its use of drones to target al-Qa’ida-linked terrorists, has contributed to Yemen’s instability in a recent interview on NPR.

Authors

Jennifer R. Williams

]]>
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/26-pollack-saudi-air-strikes-yemen?rssid=pollackk{FA8958B8-075E-4DB5-8230-BEAE8C92D323}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/87688934/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~The-dangers-of-the-Arab-intervention-in-YemenThe dangers of the Arab intervention in Yemen

The news that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states along with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Sudan have launched air strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen should give every American pause. Yes, the Houthis are Shi'a who receive some degree of backing from Iran, but this is a very dangerous escalation that is unlikely to improve the situation in Yemen and risks the stability of Saudi Arabia over the medium to long term. Moreover, the Iranian role has been greatly exaggerated in what is first and foremost a Yemeni civil war.

Even with U.S. assistance, the GCC and its coalition partners lack the capacity to break Houthi ground operations the way that American air power has been able to smash ISIS ground operations in Iraq and Syria. With enough American help, they could certainly inflict some harm on the Houthis, but they are unlikely to be able to materially shift the balance of power. If the airstrikes fail, as seems more likely than not, there is a real danger that these same states will decide to intervene on the ground—and that intervention will be largely composed of Saudi forces.

As I warned in a previous post on Yemen co-authored with the highly-regarded scholar of civil wars, Barbara Walter, a compelling body of scholarly research on civil wars has found that interventions into civil wars on behalf of the losing side rarely produce a rapid, negotiated settlement. Instead, they typically prolong the conflict, producing more death and devastation. Of greatest importance in this case, they also have a bad habit of overstressing the intervening state—especially when that state has limited capabilities and internal problems of its own.

Saudi Arabia remains the leader of the Arab world, an important American ally, and one of the most important oil producers in the world. But it is also a country with significant internal challenges, financial problems, and now a dramatic shift in government power as a result of the death of King Abdullah and the accession of King Salman. The Kingdom lacks the military capacity to intervene decisively in Yemen, and if it tries by sending in large numbers of ground troops, the most likely outcome would be a debilitating stalemate that will drain Saudi military resources, financial reserves, and political will. It could also easily enrage key segments of the populace: some furious that after spending so much on defense the Kingdom has so little capability, others equally enraged that so much money is being wasted on a senseless quagmire in Yemen instead of being spent on critical domestic problems.

(As an aside, I would note that the Egyptians have stated that they are ready to send ground troops to Yemen if airstrikes prove inadequate. This, in and of itself, is curious given the painful history of Egypt's failed involvement in the Yemeni civil war of 1961-1967. But it is no more comforting than if the Saudis were to go in alone. The Egyptians are not likely to improve the chances of success, and Egypt is also a fragile state struggling to deal with enormous domestic political and economic problems. It does not need a potentially debilitating and divisive foray into Yemen any more than the Saudis do.)

Which brings me to the American role in this intervention. One could posit a wide variety of American rationales for supporting this move: a desire to shore up the U.S.-Saudi alliance after the many quarrels of the past decade, a hope that American support for the GCC in Yemen will translate into greater GCC support for American efforts in Iraq and Syria, and/or the belief that this will allow the United States to direct GCC assets against al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula to make up for the loss of al-Anad as an American Special Forces counterterrorism base. From my perspective, these are all mistaken rationales that place short-term needs ahead of far greater long-term interests. Such reasons suggest that the United States will encourage and even enable greater and greater Saudi/GCC/Arab involvement in Yemen—exactly the thing that the United States should be seeking to dampen.

Instead, I would argue that the only good reason for the United States to support the Saudi/GCC/Arab intervention in Yemen is to gain situational awareness into their operations and leverage to prevent them from getting more deeply involved. This is one of those situations where the United States needs to restrain its allies for their own good. The long and well-examined history of civil wars offers a clear warning that greater Saudi intervention in Yemen is unlikely to improve the situation and could easily undermine the Kingdom's own security and stability over the medium to longer term. For Saudi Arabia's sake and our own, the best thing that we can do is also the hardest: convince them to cash in, rather than double down and bust.

Authors

The news that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states along with Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, and Sudan have launched air strikes against Houthi forces in Yemen should give every American pause. Yes, the Houthis are Shi'a who receive some degree of backing from Iran, but this is a very dangerous escalation that is unlikely to improve the situation in Yemen and risks the stability of Saudi Arabia over the medium to long term. Moreover, the Iranian role has been greatly exaggerated in what is first and foremost a Yemeni civil war.

Even with U.S. assistance, the GCC and its coalition partners lack the capacity to break Houthi ground operations the way that American air power has been able to smash ISIS ground operations in Iraq and Syria. With enough American help, they could certainly inflict some harm on the Houthis, but they are unlikely to be able to materially shift the balance of power. If the airstrikes fail, as seems more likely than not, there is a real danger that these same states will decide to intervene on the ground—and that intervention will be largely composed of Saudi forces.

As I warned in a previous post on Yemen co-authored with the highly-regarded scholar of civil wars, Barbara Walter, a compelling body of scholarly research on civil wars has found that interventions into civil wars on behalf of the losing side rarely produce a rapid, negotiated settlement. Instead, they typically prolong the conflict, producing more death and devastation. Of greatest importance in this case, they also have a bad habit of overstressing the intervening state—especially when that state has limited capabilities and internal problems of its own.

Saudi Arabia remains the leader of the Arab world, an important American ally, and one of the most important oil producers in the world. But it is also a country with significant internal challenges, financial problems, and now a dramatic shift in government power as a result of the death of King Abdullah and the accession of King Salman. The Kingdom lacks the military capacity to intervene decisively in Yemen, and if it tries by sending in large numbers of ground troops, the most likely outcome would be a debilitating stalemate that will drain Saudi military resources, financial reserves, and political will. It could also easily enrage key segments of the populace: some furious that after spending so much on defense the Kingdom has so little capability, others equally enraged that so much money is being wasted on a senseless quagmire in Yemen instead of being spent on critical domestic problems.

(As an aside, I would note that the Egyptians have stated that they are ready to send ground troops to Yemen if airstrikes prove inadequate. This, in and of itself, is curious given the painful history of Egypt's failed involvement in the Yemeni civil war of 1961-1967. But it is no more comforting than if the Saudis were to go in alone. The Egyptians are not likely to improve the chances of success, and Egypt is also a fragile state struggling to deal with enormous domestic political and economic problems. It does not need a potentially debilitating and divisive foray into Yemen any more than the Saudis do.)

Which brings me to the American role in this intervention. One could posit a wide variety of American rationales for supporting this move: a desire to shore up the U.S.-Saudi alliance after the many quarrels of the past decade, a hope that American support for the GCC in Yemen will translate into greater GCC support for American efforts in Iraq and Syria, and/or the belief that this will allow the United States to direct GCC assets against al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula to make up for the loss of al-Anad as an American Special Forces counterterrorism base. From my perspective, these are all mistaken rationales that place short-term needs ahead of far greater long-term interests. Such reasons suggest that the United States will encourage and even enable greater and greater Saudi/GCC/Arab involvement in Yemen—exactly the thing that the United States should be seeking to dampen.

Instead, I would argue that the only good reason for the United States to support the Saudi/GCC/Arab intervention in Yemen is to gain situational awareness into their operations and leverage to prevent them from getting more deeply involved. This is one of those situations where the United States needs to restrain its allies for their own good. The long and well-examined history of civil wars offers a clear warning that greater Saudi intervention in Yemen is unlikely to improve the situation and could easily undermine the Kingdom's own security and stability over the medium to longer term. For Saudi Arabia's sake and our own, the best thing that we can do is also the hardest: convince them to cash in, rather than double down and bust.

Authors

]]>
http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2015/03/24-pollack-testimony-us-policy-in-middle-east?rssid=pollackk{819B4825-0879-424B-BDE4-80078F979404}http://webfeeds.brookings.edu/~/87599187/0/brookingsrss/experts/pollackk~US-policy-in-the-Middle-East-What-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-itU.S. policy in the Middle East: What went wrong and how to fix it

Kenneth M. Pollack testified this afternoon before the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. policy in the Middle East. In his prepared remarks, Pollack explains that although the United States is not entirely to blame for the current dismal state of affairs in the region, the fact is that over the past 30-40 years, successive U.S. administrations have favored short-term solutions to crises in the region over long-term strategic planning; the result is that numerous opportunities to help move the region in a better direction have been squandered.

Pollack argues that the current turmoil in the Middle East is the product of two concurrent forces: the breakdown of the internal order established after World War II and the withdrawal of the Middle East’s “traditional great power hegemon”—that is, the United States. Washington disengaged from the region at the same time that the dysfunctional dictatorships that had come to power in the post-WWII era collapsed, creating a power and security vacuum into which the forces of extremism and chaos eagerly stepped.

In order to begin moving down the path toward stability in the Middle East, Pollack asserts that the United States must resist the temptation to pursue short-term solutions and instead begin to think strategically about the United States’ long-term interests in the region and the policies that can be implemented to help guarantee those interests in a way that will last beyond just the next conflagration.

Authors

Kenneth M. Pollack testified this afternoon before the Senate Armed Services Committee on U.S. policy in the Middle East. In his prepared remarks, Pollack explains that although the United States is not entirely to blame for the current dismal state of affairs in the region, the fact is that over the past 30-40 years, successive U.S. administrations have favored short-term solutions to crises in the region over long-term strategic planning; the result is that numerous opportunities to help move the region in a better direction have been squandered.

Pollack argues that the current turmoil in the Middle East is the product of two concurrent forces: the breakdown of the internal order established after World War II and the withdrawal of the Middle East’s “traditional great power hegemon”—that is, the United States. Washington disengaged from the region at the same time that the dysfunctional dictatorships that had come to power in the post-WWII era collapsed, creating a power and security vacuum into which the forces of extremism and chaos eagerly stepped.

In order to begin moving down the path toward stability in the Middle East, Pollack asserts that the United States must resist the temptation to pursue short-term solutions and instead begin to think strategically about the United States’ long-term interests in the region and the policies that can be implemented to help guarantee those interests in a way that will last beyond just the next conflagration.

Editor's Note: On March 24, Kenneth Pollack testified before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services about U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Read his testimony in full below or watch the video of the hearing.

Introduction

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Senators, I am honored to be able to appear before you to discuss U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

I came to Washington and began work on the Middle East in the U.S. government at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. During that period, the Middle East has rarely ever seemed “good” and only briefly ever hopeful, but I have never seen its problems as bad as they are now. The region’s current dreadful, dangerous situation demands that we reassess American policy toward the Middle East to ask how best we can secure our interests today, and perhaps help guide the region—or key parts of it—toward a better future.

The United States continues to have vital interests in the Middle East, and our actions (and inactions) have been an important contribution to its present dismal state. The United States was not wholly culpable for the current situation in the region, but we were also hardly blameless. Many of its problems might have been averted or mitigated by different American policies at various points over the past 30-40 years. Had we wanted to move the region in a better direction, we had many chances to do so. Unfortunately, successive American administrations have prioritized short-term expediency over long-term strategic benefit, and we missed those opportunities time and again.

To my mind, a concomitant point is that the problems of the region did not happen overnight, even if some of their symptoms caught us by surprise over the past five years. All of them were long in the making, and thus none of them lend themselves to quick fixes. Again, it has been the American predilection for quick fixes—for slapping a figurative Band-Aid on the latest Middle East conflagration and then trying to ignore it—that has brought us to the current state of affairs. The problems of the Middle East have become too deep and too wide to be treated in such fashion.

Some Historical Perspective

Mr. Chairman, it is of critical importance that we recognize the historical forces at work that have brought us to the current circumstances in the region. Not as an excuse for an inaction, but rather to understand how we got to where we are so that we can better understand what will likely be necessary to reach a better future.

At root, what is going on in the Middle East is the break down of the post-World War II order. That, not the borders drawn after World War I, is the real source of the problems. After the Second World War, the colonial powers of France and Britain were slowly forced to give up their control over the states of the region. They were replaced, across the Arab world and Iran, by autocracies of two kinds: monarchies or secular dictatorships (which we euphemistically referred to as “republics”). None of these governments had much legitimacy, even the monarchies which generally took power during the inter-war period and so had little claim to tradition or longevity.

Nevertheless, they proved more or less functional for the first several decades after the war. All of them developed modest economies fueled largely by oil, either directly from their own oilfields or indirectly via remittances and aid transfers. All of them featured top-heavy and deeply corrupt bureaucracies responsible for employing a disproportionate share of their workforces. All of them indulged highly dysfunctional educational systems that eventually failed to produce the kind of innovative labor pool necessary for information-age economies. All of them built repressive security institutions that instilled fear in their populations and convinced all but the most desperate or reckless from protesting against the systems. From the 1940s through the 1990s, these regimes clunked along, providing the bare minimum of goods and services to their population, often excusing their performance by blaming external conspiracies focused on Israel, the United States or the West more broadly.

Beginning in the 1990s, these systems began to come under pressure and to fail. Out of control demographics begat workforces too big to be employed by the public sector. For a great many Arabs (and Iranians), the corruption, incompetence and callousness of the regimes that had seemed like bearable problems when times were better, suddenly became unbearable as times got harder. The rapid advance of information technology enabled economies in East Asia and Latin America to surge ahead of the Muslim states, while the proliferation of that technology brought home to more and more people in the Muslim Middle East the revelation that they were falling behind. In the vast majority of cases, the regimes responded by becoming more repressive, crushing any who proposed an alternative way of organizing their societies. The regimes clung to power, but the repression only intensified the unhappiness of their citizens.

An “expectations gap” opened up across the Arab world and Iran, between the circumstances that the people found themselves and where they believed they ought to be. As it has everywhere else around the world and across time, that expectations gap created large-scale internal unrest. By the late 1990s, it had already produced attempted (but failed) revolutions, insurgencies and terrorism. In the region and in the West, many began to call for political, economic and social reform in the Muslim Middle East—reform as the only realistic alternative to revolution or repression. But those calls were not heeded and in 2009 in Iran and 2011 across the Arab world, these problems finally exploded in what we call the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring.

Those revolts produced two very different, but equally dangerous outcomes. In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the unrest was adequate to destroy the control of the old regime. However, because the regimes had successfully prevented any alternative conceptions of organization from emerging, there was nothing to take their place. They became failed states, enabling power vacuums to emerge, which in turn produced civil wars among various sub-state identity groups who fought for power, to avenge past wrongs, and out of fear that failure to do so would bring about their destruction by extremists among the other groups.

In virtually all of the other Arab states and Iran, the regimes were able to stamp out the unrest before it could snowball into revolution, but only at the price of even greater repression. In so doing, they capitalized on widespread fears that unrest would produce chaos and civil war as in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Tolerance for repression has some other sources as well. In Morocco and Jordan, the monarchs have promised far-reaching (and popular) reforms but have so far under-delivered on those promises, while in Lebanon and Algeria, the memory of their own previous civil wars has dampened enthusiasm for protest.

But renewed repression inevitably has its price. In places like Bahrain and Egypt, it has produced festering discontent and terrorism. Many of the other states of the region remain fragile to say the least. In Algeria and Jordan, public unhappiness lurks just below the surface of public discourse. In Saudi Arabia, the new king, Salman, felt it necessary to disburse cash to buy acceptance for his accession in a manner reminiscent of Caligula and Nero. Ultimately, repression and fear of civil war can only produce a (false) stability for so long. If there is not reform, there will eventually be more revolutions, failed states, civil wars, insurgencies and terrorism.

American Disengagement

There is one last piece of the historical puzzle that needs to be put on the table before we can begin to discuss how the United States might begin to help the Middle East dig it’s way out of it’s current situation. That is the role of the United States itself.

Even after the British finally surrendered their colonies in the 1940s and ‘50s, London continued to serve as the great power guarantor and mediator across the Middle East. In the Persian Gulf, Britain protected Saudi Arabia and the small Emirates as they grew into important oil producers. London backed the Jordanian monarchy and checked the designs of radical regimes from Egypt’s efforts in Yemen to Iraq’s designs on Kuwait.

Americans did not always like the way that the British oversaw the Middle East. The Truman Administration prevented Great Britain from overthrowing the Mossadeq government. While the Eisenhower Administration turned around and embraced that project, it later blocked Britain and France from ousting Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser in 1956. In part for that reason, when the British announced that they were withdrawing from “East of Suez” in 1971, the United States was reluctant to their place.

Nevertheless, circumstances forced us to do so. Initially, we tried to empower regional proxies—first Israel, then Iran, and then Saudi Arabia—to protect American (and Western) interests in the region instead. But the Israelis were hated by the Arabs, the Saudis lacked the will or the capacity to act decisively, and then the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. Indeed, the Iranian revolution proved to be a watershed. Our strongest regional ally was replaced by our most strident and charismatic foe, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The threat his revolutionary Iranian state posed to American allies across the region forced the United States to become militarily involved in the Persian Gulf for the first time, a commitment expanded when Iran’s defeat (with American assistance) in the Iran-Iraq War created the opportunity for Saddam Husayn to invade Kuwait and pose a different, but equally dangerous threat to the region’s vital oil exports.

And so Washington, finally shouldered the burden once borne by London. The United States became the ultimate guardian of the region’s oil flows, the mediator of many of its disputes, the deterrent to its worst threats. The true hegemon of the Middle East. As part of that evolution, American policy-makers increasingly were forced to accept that the region’s internal politics were important to American interests because internal problems could affect regional stability and its oil exports.

Of course, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush ’43 Administration attempted to eradicate some of the region’s problems permanently by military force. Their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan may have been well-intentioned (or not, as historians will ultimately decide) but they could not have been more poorly executed. The result was two long and painful wars that created a public desire to diminish America’s role in the Middle East, if not end it altogether.

The Obama Administration took office determined to make that wish reality to the maximum extent possible. The United States disengaged from Iraq pell-mell, quickly undoing much of the progress painstakingly achieved in 2007-2009. Elsewhere across the region, the United States absented itself from myriad other events. Washington stopped pressing for political and economic reform among the Arab states, turned its back on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and allowed civil wars to erupt and spread unchecked. When the Green Revolution broke out in Tehran and the Arab Spring spread across the region, Washington offered thin rhetorical support but nothing of substance.

Ultimately, however, the Da’ish (or ISIS or ISIL or Islamic State) offensive of June 2014 that overran Mosul and much of northern Iraq forced the United States to recognize that it had swung the pendulum of American involvement with the Middle East too far in the opposite direction from the militarized interventions of the Bush ’43 era, toward an equally dangerous isolation from the region. President Obama’s decision to re-intervene militarily in August and his shift in strategy declared in September 2014 were critically important steps in the right direction, although there is still a great deal to be done to turn his statements into concrete programs in both Iraq and Syria.

Ultimately then, the problems of the Middle East can be traced back to a combination of the breakdown of the internal order of the region as the semi-functional autocracies established after World War II have slowly grown ever more dysfunctional, coupled with the withdrawal of its traditional great power hegemon. Stabilizing the region will mean dealing with both of these problems, although neither lends itself to a simple turning back of the clock. However, even before these major tasks can be contemplated, there is a more immediate priority: dealing with the failed states/civil wars that have become the key drivers of instability in the Middle East.

Dealing with the Civil Wars of the Region

Today, the principal source of the turbulence and violence threatening the Middle East are the four civil wars currently raging in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. Before the United States can start to address the deeper problems of the failure of the Muslim Middle Eastern state system, it first needs to help mitigate or eliminate these engines of instability.

Some of these civil wars threaten U.S. interests directly. In particular, Iraq and Libya are important oil producers. All of them threaten U.S. interests indirectly, by breeding vicious terrorist groups, generating millions of refugees that threaten to overwhelm neighboring states, radicalizing regional populations and potentially sucking their neighbors into interventions they cannot win. Indeed, historically, civil wars have had a bad habit of causing civil wars in neighboring states as well as metastasizing into regional conflicts.

Moreover, civil wars have proven historically difficult to contain. I think it worth noting that the Obama Administration, despite all its rhetoric to the contrary, pursued a determined policy of containment toward the Syrian civil war until spillover from that civil war (in the form of Da’ish) helped push Iraq back into civil war. At that point, the Administration rightly recognized that containment of the Syrian civil war had failed and the United States would have to adopt a more pro-active policy to try to bring about an end to the conflict—and to the renewed civil war in Iraq it helped rekindle.

It is an unfortunate reality that it is widely believed that it is impossible to do anything about “somebody else’s civil war.” A well-developed body of historical scholarship on civil wars demonstrates that while it is not simple or straightforward for a third party to end a civil war peacefully, it is hardly impossible. Indeed, the policies articulated by President Obama on Iraq and Syria in September 2014 conform nicely to the lessons of this history, and therefore should give us some confidence that they are feasible, if properly resourced and executed.

Iraq. In Iraq, as I and others have reported, the narrow military effort to defeat Da’ish is going quite well. The real problems, including with the military piece, are largely political. As is well understood at this point, Iranian-backed Shi’a militias are playing an outsized role in Iraq’s military victory, frightening the Sunni populace they are meant to liberate with the specter of ethnic cleansing. The militias need to be corralled by Iraqi Army formations, preferably guided by American advisors accompanying them in the field. That will require further development of Iraq’s security forces and additional American advisors.

Of equal or greater importance is to forge a new power-sharing arrangement between the Sunni and Shi’a Arab communities as the United States did in 2007-2008. Too often, the Obama Administration has dismissed this as a luxury, an academic nicety rather than a practical necessity. They are wrong. Without such a new power-sharing arrangement, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs will have no sense of the Iraq they are being asked to fight for. They have no intention of going back to 2011, when a Shi’a prime minister manipulated Iraq’s existing political structure to repress their community. Without such a power-sharing agreement, Iraq’s Sunnis are likely to resist the central government by force, and in doing so will open the door once again to Da’ish.

Although I could make many additional points about what is needed to translate battlefield victories into meaningful political achievements in Iraq, I will add just one more. This is the need for a thoroughgoing reform of the Iraqi Security Forces to turn them back into the apolitical and largely professional force they had become by 2009—before former Prime Minister Maliki politicized the officer corps and turned the army into an incompetent, sectarian tool for his own narrow political agenda. Doing so will require retaining an American training and advisory presence—along with all of their support forces—for a decade or more. But it is absolutely critical to ensure that Iraq has a reasonably strong and independent military that can be counted to protect all of its minorities and see that the terms of the new power-sharing arrangement is honored by all sides.

Syria. Addressing the problems of the Syrian civil war is even harder. Unlike in Iraq, the Asad regime is deeply unpopular with the majority of the population but the opposition is badly fragmented and dominated by Sunni extremists. In these circumstances, the Obama Administration’s stated policy is arguably the only course of action that makes sense given the unique history of Syria and the general history of civil wars. The United States should not want to see either the Asad regime or the Sunni extremists prevail because they can only do so by mass slaughter and the victory of either would then create new threats to U.S. allies. However, the current moderate Syrian opposition is too weak, too fractious and too vilified to serve as the foundation for a viable third force. Consequently, the United States will have to build a new Syrian opposition army—something we have done with success elsewhere.[1] Moreover, we will have to provide it with extensive training, a full panoply of weaponry (including some armor and artillery), and the backing of a major U.S. air campaign as we did for other indigenous opposition armies in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya.

While this strategy certainly can succeed in ending the fighting and compelling a new power-sharing agreement that would stabilize the country, it is not going to be easy. It will take a long time and will require a sustained American commitment throughout. And this is the great question mark hanging over the Administration’s approach to Syria. The military program to recruit, train and equip a new Syrian opposition army has proceeded painfully slowly. The process of creating a corresponding political framework is even further behind. Indeed, it is virtually non-existent. Finally, while there is an argument to be made that progress in Syria can and should follow progress in Iraq, waiting too long there will make the Syrian effort far more difficult when the U.S. finally gets around to it, and risks the impact of spillover into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and back into Iraq—which is unlikely to enjoy any post-Da’ish stability if Da’ish continues to have a sanctuary next door.

Libya. Libya will require an approach much like Syria. It too needs a new military, one that is apolitical and professional, capable of defeating all of the partisan forces and then serving as the kind of strong, institution around which a new political system could be organized and enforced. Libya will also require the same kind of power-sharing arrangement to provide an equitable distribution of power and resources among its warring factions (which are primarily geographic—Cyrenaica vs. Tripolitania, Misrata vs. Zintan—although a secular-religious divide is being overlaid on these longer-standing divisions).

Both efforts will require a great deal of external support to succeed. The challenge with Libya is that while it is strategically far more important than the attention it has so far received, it is not as important to American interests as Iraq (and by association, Syria). Given the extent of the actual or proposed American commitments to Iraq and Syria, it seems unlikely that the U.S. would make a similar effort in Libya.

That means that Libya must largely be a European undertaking. Europe is far more directly affected by the loss of Libyan oil and trade and the increase in Libyan refugees. The problem, which this Committee understands only too well, is that the Europeans have allowed their militaries to atrophy to virtual impotence, and they have shown little willingness or ability to harness their economic and diplomatic resources for difficult, protracted missions like stabilizing and rebuilding Libya. Even though the Europeans would need to furnish the bulk of the combat aircraft, trainers, advisors, weaponry, economic assistance and diplomatic muscle to stabilize Libya, it will invariably require the United States to convince them and enable them to do so. We will probably have to provide political leadership, logistical assistance, military command and control, and possibly some advisors as well if we are to move them to do what is ultimately in their own best interest as well as ours.

Yemen. Yemen is the hardest of all. It is the home of one of the most dangerous al-Qa’ida franchises in the Middle East and the civil war has badly disrupted the current American system of suppressing that threat. But we cannot wish away the ongoing civil war and ultimately, eliminating the threat of al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) will require an end to the civil war itself. The last piece of our Yemeni dilemma is that, as dangerous as AQAP may be, it is not so dangerous that the American people will countenance an invasion and occupation of the country. Nor is Yemen so important as to justify the kind of American effort that the Obama Administration has committed to in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, given how parsimoniously the Administration has resourced its commitments in Iraq and Syria, it seems especially unlikely that they will make a simultaneous effort in Yemen.

Given these difficult realities, America’s best recourse in Yemen may be to relocate our counterterror assets across the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa and try as best we can to contain the Yemeni civil war. I recognize that I wrote above that it is very difficult to contain the spillover from a civil war, but I simply see no alternative in the case of Yemen. The only country willing to intervene in Yemen is Saudi Arabia, which probably lacks the capacity to do so effectively. Indeed, the greatest danger stemming from the Yemeni civil war may be the Kingdom’s determination to intervene there to try to stave off spillover from the civil war.

For over fifty years, the Saudis have feared that internal conflict in Yemen will infect the Kingdom and spawn a civil war there as well. Despite the fact that Yemen has been wracked by internal conflict for nearly that entire period and it never has caused internal instability in the Kingdom, this has not kept the Saudis from worrying that it someday will. These fears have been exacerbated by (exaggerated) Iranian support for Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Now Riyadh fears that Iran is taking over the state on its southern border, to match what the Saudis see as an Iranian “takeover” of Iraq, the country on their northern border.

There is a real risk that the Saudis will keep doubling down in Yemen and in so doing will overstrain themselves—politically, militarily and even economically. The Kingdom cannot afford to get dragged deeper into a Yemeni quagmire it cannot stabilize on its own. This is especially true given the challenges the Kingdom is likely to face from historically low oil prices and exorbitant new financial commitments in an effort to stave off the Arab Spring. The great danger is that the Kingdom could find itself bankrupted and torn apart by an endless commitment to a Yemeni quagmire, as Pakistan has been by its intervention in the Afghan civil wars.

The Kurds. Although the Kurds of Iraq are not in a state of civil war themselves, they deserve a special place in our consideration of how to deal with the civil wars of the region. In a turbulent part of the world, where there are few stable regions and where the United States has few friends, the Kurds of Iraq stand out. Although their security has been compromised by the Da’ish threat, with American air power, weapons and training, they have restored their borders and are taking the fight to the enemy. Their economy remains hobbled by graft and low oil prices, but they remain relatively better off than most of their neighbors—and well ahead of either Syria or the rest of Iraq. And while their political system still has a long way to go, there is the potential for meaningful progress there and some intelligent and enlightened leaders who could show the way if given the tools to do so.

All of this should make the United States particularly well disposed to the Kurds of northern Iraq as we try to stabilize this region and prevent the chaos any farther. It would be best—for the Kurds, for Iraq and for the United States—if Iraqi Kurdistan were an independent nation, but that prospect is at least several years off. In the meantime, America’s interests argue for expanding a strategic partnership with the Kurds to include additional military, diplomatic and economic aid. As long as Kurdistan remains a formal part of Iraq and as long as the Iraqi government is one that the United States will want to continue to back, doing so will require constant diplomatic balancing with the sovereign Iraqi government. However, we should think creatively and lean forward in assisting the Kurdistan Regional Government with its priorities, even as we also push them to move in the directions critical for our own interests.

The Twin Challenges of Da’ish and Iran

One of the worst mistakes that the United States appears to be making in its policies toward the Middle East is to focus them on the twin threats of Da’ish and Iran. There is no question that both seek to harm American interests, and quite possibly the American people themselves. Neither has our best interests at heart and both have shown the willingness to attack Americans whenever it suits their purposes.

But it would be disastrous to make them the centerpiece of our Middle East policy. Both Da’ish and the spread of Iranian influence are symptoms of the problems of the region, NOT the problem itself. As my friend Vance Serchuk—once a staffer to this committee—recently put it, wherever the U.S. has allowed a security vacuum to open up in the Middle East, that vacuum has been filled by Iran and al-Qa’ida. That has proven true in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen and partially in Libya (where Iran has not yet found a foothold.) That same competition is also threatening fragile states like Lebanon and Bahrain.

It is distressing to see the United States endlessly repeat the same mistakes. In 2001, the Bush Administration foolishly declared a “War on Terrorism.” After 14 years, that war has failed to eradicate terrorism and even failed to eradicate al-Qa’ida, the principal target of that effort. That is not surprising. You cannot fight terrorism simply by killing terrorists. One hundred years of history has made that abundantly clear. And yet, in 2014, the Obama Administration declared war on Da’ish (or ISIL as it prefers to call the group). The war on Da’ish is just as misguided as the Bush Administration’s War on Terrorism.

Terrorist groups are nothing but violent revolutionaries. Killing terrorists, while often a necessary component of any strategy is also insufficient to eradicate the problem of terrorism. Only by eliminating the underlying grievances that feed the movement is it possible to do so. That is why the only place where the United States ever successfully “eradicated” al-Qa’ida (and then only temporarily) was in Iraq in 2007-2010. We did so by addressing the basic problems of the country: securing the populace, forging an equitable power-sharing arrangement and division of economic resources, bringing Iraq’s alienated Sunni community back into the fold, and building a largely apolitical military. The group once known as al-Qa’ida in Iraq (which had already declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI) was only saved from oblivion by the civil war breaking out in neighboring Syria.

The United States government needs to recognize that the problem of Da’ish is bigger than just the problems of Iraq and Syria, but so too the problems of Iraq and Syria are bigger than just the problem of Da’ish. The United States must fashion a policy to heal the civil wars in Iraq and Syria to drive Da’ish out of these countries. That is the ONLY way to do so. Even if we inflict a catastrophic military defeat on Da’ish in both countries, if we do not address the problems of their civil wars, Da’ish—or something just like it—will be back within a year or two. However, as we should have learned in Iraq, if we end the civil war, the terrorists will be forced out. While they will doubtless find homes in other regional civil wars, failed states and failing states, removing them from Iraq and Syria would be an important step in the right direction.

The same logic applies to Iran’s expanding influence as well. Too often, Americans portray the Middle East as a chess match between Washington and Tehran—with all of the other countries and players reduced to pieces on the board. That is a dangerously misguided analogy. Iran is not controlling events in the region and is mostly reacting to them. It has undoubtedly made very significant gains over the past 2-4 years. Today, Iran wields more influence in Iraq than at any time since the Ottoman conquest of Mesopotamia. Its allies hold sway in Lebanon, are the strongest force in Yemen, and are making a modest come back in Syria.

However, it is absolutely critical to recognize that these Iranian gains have all come as a result of failed states and civil wars which the Iranians took advantage of exactly as al-Qaida and Da’ish have. Once again, the best way to diminish and eliminate Iranian influence in these places is to end the civil wars. Once again, Iraq furnishes the best example. In 2008-2009, it was the Iraqis who drove Iran from Iraq just as they effectively drove out AQI. Once the United States finally established security and forged a new power-sharing agreement among Sunni and Shi’a Arabs, it was the Iraqis (with considerable American assistance) that drove Iran’s principal remaining ally, Muqtada as-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi militia, first from Basra, then Qurnah, Amarah, Kut and Sadr City itself. By the beginning of 2010, Iran had virtually no influence in Iraq because Iraqis felt strong and united in a new sense of nationalism. (Unfortunately, that would collapse after the 2010 elections when the United States failed to enforce the rules of the democratic system, which then allowed Iranian influence back in).

Both Da’ish (and al-Qa’ida) and the spread of Iranian influence are threats to American interests because these groups continue to define themselves as enemies of the United States. But we make two disastrous mistakes in thinking that they are the sources of our problems in the region and that the best way to address them is to attack them directly. History has demonstrated that it is possible to fight terrorism and roll back Iranian influence. But the best and only realistic way to do so is to heal the hurts of the region, rebuild its failed states and end its civil wars. Those are the open spaces that both AQ/Da’ish and Iran exploit. Protect those spaces, and neither will find the soil to grow or spread.

Resurrecting Reform

Beyond ending the civil wars currently roiling the region, the United States must also push forward policies that will help avoid the creation of new failed states and new civil wars—recognizing that both the Sunni terrorists and the Iranians will be doing the opposite in hopes of creating new hosts to infect. This means embracing the cause of political, economic and social reform in the Muslim Middle East that the United States has toyed with for decades, but never made more than a half-hearted commitment.

The political, economic and social grievances that gave rise to the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring have not gone away. They have been temporarily suppressed. They will be back. We don’t know when and we don’t know in what form, but they will undoubtedly be back. And a critical goal of American policy moving forward must be to guard against that day heading it off as best we can by pushing the states of the region to adopt reform, not repression, as the only viable long-term solution.

The United States should not avoid the need for political reform simply because it is hard to accomplish. The Middle East is in such bad shape because it is at the beginning, not the end, of a regional movement demanding political change. The more stridently governments resist reform, the more violence there will be. We can try to put off the inevitable but ignoring the need for real change will mean that change, when it inevitably comes, will be violent, producing new revolutions, failed states, civil wars and other problems for the United States and its allies. We cannot avoid the wider set of underlying economic, political and social problems that were the ultimate cause of the Arab Spring and the civil wars it inadvertently produced. If we are to avoid worse, reform is the only path out.

That is a simple statement and unquestionably the right answer for the states of the region to avoid further civil wars and internal unrest. But it is wicked hard in practice. Having come through the searing events of 2011, many of the Arab regimes that survived have concluded that any reform would only encourage greater demands for change that could easily escalate out of control—producing the revolts, state collapse and civil war that they (and we) fear. They aren’t entirely wrong. Reform that is handled badly—too fast, too slow, too narrow, too wide—can produce exactly that dynamic. No reform at all, however, is a recipe for disaster.

As a final point on the issue of the importance of reform, it is worth noting the exception to the regional rule. Alone among the states of the Muslim Middle East, Tunisia has embraced dramatic reform and begun a difficult process of real democratization. It has already survived multiple crises where it might easily have veered back toward dictatorship and repression (as Egypt unfortunately has). If its transition is successful, it could prove to be a useful example for other states to follow—the first Arab democracy.

That is a potentially transformative role, one that the United States should nurture. The opposite is also true: were Tunisia to fail, it would be taken by many as a sign that political pluralism and free-market economics are impossible in the Muslim Middle East, thus generating renewed support for repression as the only alternative. For both of these reasons, the United States, and the West more broadly, have a huge stake in the success of Tunisia. Even in an era of shrinking foreign aid budgets, Tunisia is a wise investment and potentially our best bet.

Moreover, other small states with the potential to move further down the path of reform—like Morocco and Jordan—could be usefully persuaded to do so with the promise of more generous aid. Again, these are exactly the kind of investments in the future of the Middle East that can only pay off in the long run, but are in fact the only potential solutions for the deep-seated problems of the region that simply cannot be solved by quick fixes.

Reaching Out to Other Great Powers

Although the United States can and should swing the pendulum of American involvement in the region back toward the center, as the Obama Administration has already begun to do, this cannot be the only answer to our problems. Ending the civil wars of the region and pushing the Arab states to embrace the long process of meaningful political, economic and social reform is not going to be easy. Executing and enabling such policies will require real resources, and a commitment maintained over years if not decades. While public opinion polls indicate considerable willingness on the part of the American people to commit resources to the problems of the Middle East, it seems unlikely that this nation will make another massive commitment to the Middle East, say on a par with the commitment it made to Iraq in 2003-2011, anytime soon.

If the United States is no longer able or no longer willing to bear such costs alone, we are going to need to find others to share the burden. Certainly, the Europeans can provide some assistance, especially in the economic realm. But the Europeans now punch well below their weight in all policy spheres and we should not count on too much from them. Some regional states can contribute economic resources and political clout to certain specific projects, like ending the civil war in Syria, but gone are the days when the Saudis would back any American project no matter how disconnected from their own immediate security concerns. Moreover, even though the Saudis embraced (gradual) reform at home under King Abdullah, at the same time they ardently pursued counter-revolutionary policies that stifled reform abroad. Consequently, we should not assume that the region can do this on its own, even with advice, encouragement and pressure from the United States.

For all of these reasons, the United States may have to begin to look to new players on the Middle Eastern scene to help advance these ambitious, but essential, policy objectives. The two obvious candidates are China and India.

At first blush, this idea may seem ludicrous. The Chinese often see themselves as our ultimate rival for global dominance or at least local dominance in East Asia. They often ally with odious Middle Eastern regimes out of venal self-interest. They try to avoid getting involved in the internal affairs of other countries whenever possible and are often unmoved by aggressive behavior by anyone other than the United States. For its part, India has massive internal issues of its own to sort out, has little military capacity, and is locked in a sixty-year old struggle with Muslim Pakistan.

Yet there are other factors that argue entirely in the opposite direction. China and India are two of the fastest industrializing countries in the world, and are increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil (far more so than the United States). Their political systems require continued economic growth and that economic growth is threatened by instability in the oil markets (or just high prices) that can be triggered by instability in the Middle East. Thus, the primary interest of both India and China in the Middle East is the same as America’s primary interest there. Moreover, both are developing power projection capabilities and increasingly looking to protect their interests abroad.

The trick will be to persuade the Chinese and Indians that while they may not care about the internal affairs of the states of the Middle East today, they will in the future—and when they do, they are liable to wish that they had cared about it all along. What is required is to induce Beijing and Delhi to understand that the problems of the region are creating chronic internal instability which is ultimately the greatest threat to the oil exports of the region.

If we are able to do so, we will succeed in turning a major challenge for our grand strategy into a major asset. If the Chinese and Indians (to a lesser extent) insist on seeing the United States as an adversary and are willing to associate with states regardless of their actions—foreign or domestic—this will greatly complicate the ability of the United States to dampen the risk of interstate conflict and to press regional regimes to adopt far-reaching reforms. They will always be able to hide behind the Chinese, getting what they need from Chinese businessmen and using Beijing as a diplomatic and (eventually) military counterweight to the United States. Implementing a grand strategy of enabling reform in the Muslim Middle East will be that much more difficult under these circumstances. However, if we are able to bring the Chinese and Indians around, they would then become our allies in the same initiative.

Imagine the impact of these three great powers working in tandem to discourage foreign aggression and encourage internal reform? Imagine if regional reformers had alternative great power backers (one without the taints we have acquired) to turn to for aid in all its forms? Imagine if would-be troublemakers met a united front of Washington, Beijing and Delhi determined to prevent them from causing mischief? Imagine if local regimes found the champions of both East and West determined to move them down the path of reform—and willing to help them do so?

This recognition creates a basis for mutual understanding. If China and India acknowledge their own need for greater stability in the Middle East to ensure the free flow of oil, but recognize that the region is fragile and can be a trap for foreign great powers, then Chinese and Indian policymakers may be receptive to an arrangement that minimizes great power competition in the Middle East, maximizes cooperation, and possibly even establishes a division of labor in which the United States continues to play a leading military and political role, with economic and diplomatic support from Beijing and Delhi.

Whereas India is the world’s most populous democracy, China itself has made only grudging political reforms—and certainly has not championed political pluralism abroad. Nevertheless, China’s ambivalence about democracy probably won’t be a serious stumbling block to cooperation in promoting internal reform and helping to make that possible across the Middle East. The Chinese have demonstrated a high degree of cynicism when it comes to systems of government elsewhere, showing few reservations about democratization in South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, let alone farther afield in Europe, Africa and Latin America. As long as a country is doing whatever it is China wants and needs, Beijing has typically shown itself willing to tolerate political reform.

Even where China opposes efforts to promote democracy, such as in North Korea and Myanmar, its concern is principally with preserving regimes friendly to it and avoiding chaotic transitions that could affect its interests. The kind of gradual, indigenously-driven process of political reform (which may or may not produce true democracy depending on the desires of the people themselves) envisioned in this grand strategy should be acceptable to the Chinese if they come to see it as in their interests because it will ensure long-term stability even if comes at the expense of short-term dislocations.

Persuading China and India to help share the burdens of the Middle East will likely consist of more than just compelling conversation. In particular, a critical element in making China and India our partners in this enterprise will be giving them a role in the Middle East commensurate with their growing strength and aspirations. This is going to be particularly hard for the United States with regard to China, because it is going to mean accepting Beijing as our equal in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Rather than making unilateral decisions after minimal consultation with our regional allies, Washington will have to learn to negotiate common policies with Beijing—and Delhi. It will certainly mean lots of painful coordination with other governments, whose concurrence will often be vital for the sake of the wider partnership if not for cooperation on the specific matter itself. It may mean allowing the Chinese and Indians basing rights in the region, both so that they feel comfortable that they can protect their own interests, and so that they are able to exercise their influence jointly with us. It will probably mean agreeing to do some things Beijing’s way and other things Delhi’s.

All of this would be laborious, frustrating, time-consuming, and even enraging for America’s leaders and diplomats, but the rewards would be well worth the effort. Moreover, they appear increasingly necessary given America’s diminishing willingness to bear the costs of the Middle East on its own.

The Necessity of Long-Term Strategic Focus

I have attempted to cover a lot of ground in this testimony, sketching out the framework of a new American grand strategy for the Middle East. There is a great deal more that would need to be said to explain how these broad approaches could be translated into concrete policies. But such a framework is a necessary starting point both in building such a program and in debating whether it is the right one for the nation. I believe it is, if only because I can think of no other that would better suit our interests in the Middle East, our circumstances, and the tools and resources we have available to us there.

The one critical requirement of this strategy that I fear we may have in inadequate supply is the commitment to see it through. We are an impatient people, especially when it comes to the confounding problems of the Middle East. We have typically sought to fix a problem there, or just fix it-up, and then move on to something we liked more. Unfortunately, the history of our involvement in the region since 1971 has been that every time we have tried this, it has not fixed anything at all, and instead the problem has inevitably come back to bite us later, and require far more effort and resources to address it then. As I have said elsewhere, the Middle East is NOT Las Vegas: what happens there does not stay there.

Nor do its problems admit themselves of quick and easy solutions. It took a long time and a lot of disastrous mistakes (by Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Israelis, Europeans, Americans and many others) to bring the region to its current distressing state of affairs. No American strategy is going to change that quickly. While there are solutions to the problems we face in the Middle East, they require, time, patience and the determination to see them through.

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Senators, our Founding Fathers explicitly created the United States Senate to be the guardians of America’s long-term good. To ensure that at least some segment of the nation’s leaders had the perspective and the ability to fight for what is in the country’s interests beyond tomorrow or even six-months from tomorrow. For that reason, I urge you, as you contemplate U.S. policy toward the Middle East to be the voice of strategic wisdom. To consider how deep the problems of the region have become, and to press for changes in American policy that put in place the long-term shifts that will be needed to actually deal with the problems of the region, rather than merely trying to paper over them until the next, worse crisis engulfs us.

Authors

Editor's Note: On March 24, Kenneth Pollack testified before the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services about U.S. policy toward the Middle East. Read his testimony in full below or watch the video of the hearing.

Introduction

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Senators, I am honored to be able to appear before you to discuss U.S. policy toward the Middle East.

I came to Washington and began work on the Middle East in the U.S. government at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. During that period, the Middle East has rarely ever seemed “good” and only briefly ever hopeful, but I have never seen its problems as bad as they are now. The region’s current dreadful, dangerous situation demands that we reassess American policy toward the Middle East to ask how best we can secure our interests today, and perhaps help guide the region—or key parts of it—toward a better future.

The United States continues to have vital interests in the Middle East, and our actions (and inactions) have been an important contribution to its present dismal state. The United States was not wholly culpable for the current situation in the region, but we were also hardly blameless. Many of its problems might have been averted or mitigated by different American policies at various points over the past 30-40 years. Had we wanted to move the region in a better direction, we had many chances to do so. Unfortunately, successive American administrations have prioritized short-term expediency over long-term strategic benefit, and we missed those opportunities time and again.

To my mind, a concomitant point is that the problems of the region did not happen overnight, even if some of their symptoms caught us by surprise over the past five years. All of them were long in the making, and thus none of them lend themselves to quick fixes. Again, it has been the American predilection for quick fixes—for slapping a figurative Band-Aid on the latest Middle East conflagration and then trying to ignore it—that has brought us to the current state of affairs. The problems of the Middle East have become too deep and too wide to be treated in such fashion.

Some Historical Perspective

Mr. Chairman, it is of critical importance that we recognize the historical forces at work that have brought us to the current circumstances in the region. Not as an excuse for an inaction, but rather to understand how we got to where we are so that we can better understand what will likely be necessary to reach a better future.

At root, what is going on in the Middle East is the break down of the post-World War II order. That, not the borders drawn after World War I, is the real source of the problems. After the Second World War, the colonial powers of France and Britain were slowly forced to give up their control over the states of the region. They were replaced, across the Arab world and Iran, by autocracies of two kinds: monarchies or secular dictatorships (which we euphemistically referred to as “republics”). None of these governments had much legitimacy, even the monarchies which generally took power during the inter-war period and so had little claim to tradition or longevity.

Nevertheless, they proved more or less functional for the first several decades after the war. All of them developed modest economies fueled largely by oil, either directly from their own oilfields or indirectly via remittances and aid transfers. All of them featured top-heavy and deeply corrupt bureaucracies responsible for employing a disproportionate share of their workforces. All of them indulged highly dysfunctional educational systems that eventually failed to produce the kind of innovative labor pool necessary for information-age economies. All of them built repressive security institutions that instilled fear in their populations and convinced all but the most desperate or reckless from protesting against the systems. From the 1940s through the 1990s, these regimes clunked along, providing the bare minimum of goods and services to their population, often excusing their performance by blaming external conspiracies focused on Israel, the United States or the West more broadly.

Beginning in the 1990s, these systems began to come under pressure and to fail. Out of control demographics begat workforces too big to be employed by the public sector. For a great many Arabs (and Iranians), the corruption, incompetence and callousness of the regimes that had seemed like bearable problems when times were better, suddenly became unbearable as times got harder. The rapid advance of information technology enabled economies in East Asia and Latin America to surge ahead of the Muslim states, while the proliferation of that technology brought home to more and more people in the Muslim Middle East the revelation that they were falling behind. In the vast majority of cases, the regimes responded by becoming more repressive, crushing any who proposed an alternative way of organizing their societies. The regimes clung to power, but the repression only intensified the unhappiness of their citizens.

An “expectations gap” opened up across the Arab world and Iran, between the circumstances that the people found themselves and where they believed they ought to be. As it has everywhere else around the world and across time, that expectations gap created large-scale internal unrest. By the late 1990s, it had already produced attempted (but failed) revolutions, insurgencies and terrorism. In the region and in the West, many began to call for political, economic and social reform in the Muslim Middle East—reform as the only realistic alternative to revolution or repression. But those calls were not heeded and in 2009 in Iran and 2011 across the Arab world, these problems finally exploded in what we call the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring.

Those revolts produced two very different, but equally dangerous outcomes. In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the unrest was adequate to destroy the control of the old regime. However, because the regimes had successfully prevented any alternative conceptions of organization from emerging, there was nothing to take their place. They became failed states, enabling power vacuums to emerge, which in turn produced civil wars among various sub-state identity groups who fought for power, to avenge past wrongs, and out of fear that failure to do so would bring about their destruction by extremists among the other groups.

In virtually all of the other Arab states and Iran, the regimes were able to stamp out the unrest before it could snowball into revolution, but only at the price of even greater repression. In so doing, they capitalized on widespread fears that unrest would produce chaos and civil war as in Libya, Syria and Yemen. Tolerance for repression has some other sources as well. In Morocco and Jordan, the monarchs have promised far-reaching (and popular) reforms but have so far under-delivered on those promises, while in Lebanon and Algeria, the memory of their own previous civil wars has dampened enthusiasm for protest.

But renewed repression inevitably has its price. In places like Bahrain and Egypt, it has produced festering discontent and terrorism. Many of the other states of the region remain fragile to say the least. In Algeria and Jordan, public unhappiness lurks just below the surface of public discourse. In Saudi Arabia, the new king, Salman, felt it necessary to disburse cash to buy acceptance for his accession in a manner reminiscent of Caligula and Nero. Ultimately, repression and fear of civil war can only produce a (false) stability for so long. If there is not reform, there will eventually be more revolutions, failed states, civil wars, insurgencies and terrorism.

American Disengagement

There is one last piece of the historical puzzle that needs to be put on the table before we can begin to discuss how the United States might begin to help the Middle East dig it’s way out of it’s current situation. That is the role of the United States itself.

Even after the British finally surrendered their colonies in the 1940s and ‘50s, London continued to serve as the great power guarantor and mediator across the Middle East. In the Persian Gulf, Britain protected Saudi Arabia and the small Emirates as they grew into important oil producers. London backed the Jordanian monarchy and checked the designs of radical regimes from Egypt’s efforts in Yemen to Iraq’s designs on Kuwait.

Americans did not always like the way that the British oversaw the Middle East. The Truman Administration prevented Great Britain from overthrowing the Mossadeq government. While the Eisenhower Administration turned around and embraced that project, it later blocked Britain and France from ousting Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasser in 1956. In part for that reason, when the British announced that they were withdrawing from “East of Suez” in 1971, the United States was reluctant to their place.

Nevertheless, circumstances forced us to do so. Initially, we tried to empower regional proxies—first Israel, then Iran, and then Saudi Arabia—to protect American (and Western) interests in the region instead. But the Israelis were hated by the Arabs, the Saudis lacked the will or the capacity to act decisively, and then the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. Indeed, the Iranian revolution proved to be a watershed. Our strongest regional ally was replaced by our most strident and charismatic foe, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The threat his revolutionary Iranian state posed to American allies across the region forced the United States to become militarily involved in the Persian Gulf for the first time, a commitment expanded when Iran’s defeat (with American assistance) in the Iran-Iraq War created the opportunity for Saddam Husayn to invade Kuwait and pose a different, but equally dangerous threat to the region’s vital oil exports.

And so Washington, finally shouldered the burden once borne by London. The United States became the ultimate guardian of the region’s oil flows, the mediator of many of its disputes, the deterrent to its worst threats. The true hegemon of the Middle East. As part of that evolution, American policy-makers increasingly were forced to accept that the region’s internal politics were important to American interests because internal problems could affect regional stability and its oil exports.

Of course, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the Bush ’43 Administration attempted to eradicate some of the region’s problems permanently by military force. Their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan may have been well-intentioned (or not, as historians will ultimately decide) but they could not have been more poorly executed. The result was two long and painful wars that created a public desire to diminish America’s role in the Middle East, if not end it altogether.

The Obama Administration took office determined to make that wish reality to the maximum extent possible. The United States disengaged from Iraq pell-mell, quickly undoing much of the progress painstakingly achieved in 2007-2009. Elsewhere across the region, the United States absented itself from myriad other events. Washington stopped pressing for political and economic reform among the Arab states, turned its back on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and allowed civil wars to erupt and spread unchecked. When the Green Revolution broke out in Tehran and the Arab Spring spread across the region, Washington offered thin rhetorical support but nothing of substance.

Ultimately, however, the Da’ish (or ISIS or ISIL or Islamic State) offensive of June 2014 that overran Mosul and much of northern Iraq forced the United States to recognize that it had swung the pendulum of American involvement with the Middle East too far in the opposite direction from the militarized interventions of the Bush ’43 era, toward an equally dangerous isolation from the region. President Obama’s decision to re-intervene militarily in August and his shift in strategy declared in September 2014 were critically important steps in the right direction, although there is still a great deal to be done to turn his statements into concrete programs in both Iraq and Syria.

Ultimately then, the problems of the Middle East can be traced back to a combination of the breakdown of the internal order of the region as the semi-functional autocracies established after World War II have slowly grown ever more dysfunctional, coupled with the withdrawal of its traditional great power hegemon. Stabilizing the region will mean dealing with both of these problems, although neither lends itself to a simple turning back of the clock. However, even before these major tasks can be contemplated, there is a more immediate priority: dealing with the failed states/civil wars that have become the key drivers of instability in the Middle East.

Dealing with the Civil Wars of the Region

Today, the principal source of the turbulence and violence threatening the Middle East are the four civil wars currently raging in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya. Before the United States can start to address the deeper problems of the failure of the Muslim Middle Eastern state system, it first needs to help mitigate or eliminate these engines of instability.

Some of these civil wars threaten U.S. interests directly. In particular, Iraq and Libya are important oil producers. All of them threaten U.S. interests indirectly, by breeding vicious terrorist groups, generating millions of refugees that threaten to overwhelm neighboring states, radicalizing regional populations and potentially sucking their neighbors into interventions they cannot win. Indeed, historically, civil wars have had a bad habit of causing civil wars in neighboring states as well as metastasizing into regional conflicts.

Moreover, civil wars have proven historically difficult to contain. I think it worth noting that the Obama Administration, despite all its rhetoric to the contrary, pursued a determined policy of containment toward the Syrian civil war until spillover from that civil war (in the form of Da’ish) helped push Iraq back into civil war. At that point, the Administration rightly recognized that containment of the Syrian civil war had failed and the United States would have to adopt a more pro-active policy to try to bring about an end to the conflict—and to the renewed civil war in Iraq it helped rekindle.

It is an unfortunate reality that it is widely believed that it is impossible to do anything about “somebody else’s civil war.” A well-developed body of historical scholarship on civil wars demonstrates that while it is not simple or straightforward for a third party to end a civil war peacefully, it is hardly impossible. Indeed, the policies articulated by President Obama on Iraq and Syria in September 2014 conform nicely to the lessons of this history, and therefore should give us some confidence that they are feasible, if properly resourced and executed.

Iraq. In Iraq, as I and others have reported, the narrow military effort to defeat Da’ish is going quite well. The real problems, including with the military piece, are largely political. As is well understood at this point, Iranian-backed Shi’a militias are playing an outsized role in Iraq’s military victory, frightening the Sunni populace they are meant to liberate with the specter of ethnic cleansing. The militias need to be corralled by Iraqi Army formations, preferably guided by American advisors accompanying them in the field. That will require further development of Iraq’s security forces and additional American advisors.

Of equal or greater importance is to forge a new power-sharing arrangement between the Sunni and Shi’a Arab communities as the United States did in 2007-2008. Too often, the Obama Administration has dismissed this as a luxury, an academic nicety rather than a practical necessity. They are wrong. Without such a new power-sharing arrangement, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs will have no sense of the Iraq they are being asked to fight for. They have no intention of going back to 2011, when a Shi’a prime minister manipulated Iraq’s existing political structure to repress their community. Without such a power-sharing agreement, Iraq’s Sunnis are likely to resist the central government by force, and in doing so will open the door once again to Da’ish.

Although I could make many additional points about what is needed to translate battlefield victories into meaningful political achievements in Iraq, I will add just one more. This is the need for a thoroughgoing reform of the Iraqi Security Forces to turn them back into the apolitical and largely professional force they had become by 2009—before former Prime Minister Maliki politicized the officer corps and turned the army into an incompetent, sectarian tool for his own narrow political agenda. Doing so will require retaining an American training and advisory presence—along with all of their support forces—for a decade or more. But it is absolutely critical to ensure that Iraq has a reasonably strong and independent military that can be counted to protect all of its minorities and see that the terms of the new power-sharing arrangement is honored by all sides.

Syria. Addressing the problems of the Syrian civil war is even harder. Unlike in Iraq, the Asad regime is deeply unpopular with the majority of the population but the opposition is badly fragmented and dominated by Sunni extremists. In these circumstances, the Obama Administration’s stated policy is arguably the only course of action that makes sense given the unique history of Syria and the general history of civil wars. The United States should not want to see either the Asad regime or the Sunni extremists prevail because they can only do so by mass slaughter and the victory of either would then create new threats to U.S. allies. However, the current moderate Syrian opposition is too weak, too fractious and too vilified to serve as the foundation for a viable third force. Consequently, the United States will have to build a new Syrian opposition army—something we have done with success elsewhere.[1] Moreover, we will have to provide it with extensive training, a full panoply of weaponry (including some armor and artillery), and the backing of a major U.S. air campaign as we did for other indigenous opposition armies in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya.

While this strategy certainly can succeed in ending the fighting and compelling a new power-sharing agreement that would stabilize the country, it is not going to be easy. It will take a long time and will require a sustained American commitment throughout. And this is the great question mark hanging over the Administration’s approach to Syria. The military program to recruit, train and equip a new Syrian opposition army has proceeded painfully slowly. The process of creating a corresponding political framework is even further behind. Indeed, it is virtually non-existent. Finally, while there is an argument to be made that progress in Syria can and should follow progress in Iraq, waiting too long there will make the Syrian effort far more difficult when the U.S. finally gets around to it, and risks the impact of spillover into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and back into Iraq—which is unlikely to enjoy any post-Da’ish stability if Da’ish continues to have a sanctuary next door.

Libya. Libya will require an approach much like Syria. It too needs a new military, one that is apolitical and professional, capable of defeating all of the partisan forces and then serving as the kind of strong, institution around which a new political system could be organized and enforced. Libya will also require the same kind of power-sharing arrangement to provide an equitable distribution of power and resources among its warring factions (which are primarily geographic—Cyrenaica vs. Tripolitania, Misrata vs. Zintan—although a secular-religious divide is being overlaid on these longer-standing divisions).

Both efforts will require a great deal of external support to succeed. The challenge with Libya is that while it is strategically far more important than the attention it has so far received, it is not as important to American interests as Iraq (and by association, Syria). Given the extent of the actual or proposed American commitments to Iraq and Syria, it seems unlikely that the U.S. would make a similar effort in Libya.

That means that Libya must largely be a European undertaking. Europe is far more directly affected by the loss of Libyan oil and trade and the increase in Libyan refugees. The problem, which this Committee understands only too well, is that the Europeans have allowed their militaries to atrophy to virtual impotence, and they have shown little willingness or ability to harness their economic and diplomatic resources for difficult, protracted missions like stabilizing and rebuilding Libya. Even though the Europeans would need to furnish the bulk of the combat aircraft, trainers, advisors, weaponry, economic assistance and diplomatic muscle to stabilize Libya, it will invariably require the United States to convince them and enable them to do so. We will probably have to provide political leadership, logistical assistance, military command and control, and possibly some advisors as well if we are to move them to do what is ultimately in their own best interest as well as ours.

Yemen. Yemen is the hardest of all. It is the home of one of the most dangerous al-Qa’ida franchises in the Middle East and the civil war has badly disrupted the current American system of suppressing that threat. But we cannot wish away the ongoing civil war and ultimately, eliminating the threat of al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) will require an end to the civil war itself. The last piece of our Yemeni dilemma is that, as dangerous as AQAP may be, it is not so dangerous that the American people will countenance an invasion and occupation of the country. Nor is Yemen so important as to justify the kind of American effort that the Obama Administration has committed to in Iraq and Syria. Indeed, given how parsimoniously the Administration has resourced its commitments in Iraq and Syria, it seems especially unlikely that they will make a simultaneous effort in Yemen.

Given these difficult realities, America’s best recourse in Yemen may be to relocate our counterterror assets across the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa and try as best we can to contain the Yemeni civil war. I recognize that I wrote above that it is very difficult to contain the spillover from a civil war, but I simply see no alternative in the case of Yemen. The only country willing to intervene in Yemen is Saudi Arabia, which probably lacks the capacity to do so effectively. Indeed, the greatest danger stemming from the Yemeni civil war may be the Kingdom’s determination to intervene there to try to stave off spillover from the civil war.

For over fifty years, the Saudis have feared that internal conflict in Yemen will infect the Kingdom and spawn a civil war there as well. Despite the fact that Yemen has been wracked by internal conflict for nearly that entire period and it never has caused internal instability in the Kingdom, this has not kept the Saudis from worrying that it someday will. These fears have been exacerbated by (exaggerated) Iranian support for Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Now Riyadh fears that Iran is taking over the state on its southern border, to match what the Saudis see as an Iranian “takeover” of Iraq, the country on their northern border.

There is a real risk that the Saudis will keep doubling down in Yemen and in so doing will overstrain themselves—politically, militarily and even economically. The Kingdom cannot afford to get dragged deeper into a Yemeni quagmire it cannot stabilize on its own. This is especially true given the challenges the Kingdom is likely to face from historically low oil prices and exorbitant new financial commitments in an effort to stave off the Arab Spring. The great danger is that the Kingdom could find itself bankrupted and torn apart by an endless commitment to a Yemeni quagmire, as Pakistan has been by its intervention in the Afghan civil wars.

The Kurds. Although the Kurds of Iraq are not in a state of civil war themselves, they deserve a special place in our consideration of how to deal with the civil wars of the region. In a turbulent part of the world, where there are few stable regions and where the United States has few friends, the Kurds of Iraq stand out. Although their security has been compromised by the Da’ish threat, with American air power, weapons and training, they have restored their borders and are taking the fight to the enemy. Their economy remains hobbled by graft and low oil prices, but they remain relatively better off than most of their neighbors—and well ahead of either Syria or the rest of Iraq. And while their political system still has a long way to go, there is the potential for meaningful progress there and some intelligent and enlightened leaders who could show the way if given the tools to do so.

All of this should make the United States particularly well disposed to the Kurds of northern Iraq as we try to stabilize this region and prevent the chaos any farther. It would be best—for the Kurds, for Iraq and for the United States—if Iraqi Kurdistan were an independent nation, but that prospect is at least several years off. In the meantime, America’s interests argue for expanding a strategic partnership with the Kurds to include additional military, diplomatic and economic aid. As long as Kurdistan remains a formal part of Iraq and as long as the Iraqi government is one that the United States will want to continue to back, doing so will require constant diplomatic balancing with the sovereign Iraqi government. However, we should think creatively and lean forward in assisting the Kurdistan Regional Government with its priorities, even as we also push them to move in the directions critical for our own interests.

The Twin Challenges of Da’ish and Iran

One of the worst mistakes that the United States appears to be making in its policies toward the Middle East is to focus them on the twin threats of Da’ish and Iran. There is no question that both seek to harm American interests, and quite possibly the American people themselves. Neither has our best interests at heart and both have shown the willingness to attack Americans whenever it suits their purposes.

But it would be disastrous to make them the centerpiece of our Middle East policy. Both Da’ish and the spread of Iranian influence are symptoms of the problems of the region, NOT the problem itself. As my friend Vance Serchuk—once a staffer to this committee—recently put it, wherever the U.S. has allowed a security vacuum to open up in the Middle East, that vacuum has been filled by Iran and al-Qa’ida. That has proven true in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen and partially in Libya (where Iran has not yet found a foothold.) That same competition is also threatening fragile states like Lebanon and Bahrain.

It is distressing to see the United States endlessly repeat the same mistakes. In 2001, the Bush Administration foolishly declared a “War on Terrorism.” After 14 years, that war has failed to eradicate terrorism and even failed to eradicate al-Qa’ida, the principal target of that effort. That is not surprising. You cannot fight terrorism simply by killing terrorists. One hundred years of history has made that abundantly clear. And yet, in 2014, the Obama Administration declared war on Da’ish (or ISIL as it prefers to call the group). The war on Da’ish is just as misguided as the Bush Administration’s War on Terrorism.

Terrorist groups are nothing but violent revolutionaries. Killing terrorists, while often a necessary component of any strategy is also insufficient to eradicate the problem of terrorism. Only by eliminating the underlying grievances that feed the movement is it possible to do so. That is why the only place where the United States ever successfully “eradicated” al-Qa’ida (and then only temporarily) was in Iraq in 2007-2010. We did so by addressing the basic problems of the country: securing the populace, forging an equitable power-sharing arrangement and division of economic resources, bringing Iraq’s alienated Sunni community back into the fold, and building a largely apolitical military. The group once known as al-Qa’ida in Iraq (which had already declared itself the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI) was only saved from oblivion by the civil war breaking out in neighboring Syria.

The United States government needs to recognize that the problem of Da’ish is bigger than just the problems of Iraq and Syria, but so too the problems of Iraq and Syria are bigger than just the problem of Da’ish. The United States must fashion a policy to heal the civil wars in Iraq and Syria to drive Da’ish out of these countries. That is the ONLY way to do so. Even if we inflict a catastrophic military defeat on Da’ish in both countries, if we do not address the problems of their civil wars, Da’ish—or something just like it—will be back within a year or two. However, as we should have learned in Iraq, if we end the civil war, the terrorists will be forced out. While they will doubtless find homes in other regional civil wars, failed states and failing states, removing them from Iraq and Syria would be an important step in the right direction.

The same logic applies to Iran’s expanding influence as well. Too often, Americans portray the Middle East as a chess match between Washington and Tehran—with all of the other countries and players reduced to pieces on the board. That is a dangerously misguided analogy. Iran is not controlling events in the region and is mostly reacting to them. It has undoubtedly made very significant gains over the past 2-4 years. Today, Iran wields more influence in Iraq than at any time since the Ottoman conquest of Mesopotamia. Its allies hold sway in Lebanon, are the strongest force in Yemen, and are making a modest come back in Syria.

However, it is absolutely critical to recognize that these Iranian gains have all come as a result of failed states and civil wars which the Iranians took advantage of exactly as al-Qaida and Da’ish have. Once again, the best way to diminish and eliminate Iranian influence in these places is to end the civil wars. Once again, Iraq furnishes the best example. In 2008-2009, it was the Iraqis who drove Iran from Iraq just as they effectively drove out AQI. Once the United States finally established security and forged a new power-sharing agreement among Sunni and Shi’a Arabs, it was the Iraqis (with considerable American assistance) that drove Iran’s principal remaining ally, Muqtada as-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi militia, first from Basra, then Qurnah, Amarah, Kut and Sadr City itself. By the beginning of 2010, Iran had virtually no influence in Iraq because Iraqis felt strong and united in a new sense of nationalism. (Unfortunately, that would collapse after the 2010 elections when the United States failed to enforce the rules of the democratic system, which then allowed Iranian influence back in).

Both Da’ish (and al-Qa’ida) and the spread of Iranian influence are threats to American interests because these groups continue to define themselves as enemies of the United States. But we make two disastrous mistakes in thinking that they are the sources of our problems in the region and that the best way to address them is to attack them directly. History has demonstrated that it is possible to fight terrorism and roll back Iranian influence. But the best and only realistic way to do so is to heal the hurts of the region, rebuild its failed states and end its civil wars. Those are the open spaces that both AQ/Da’ish and Iran exploit. Protect those spaces, and neither will find the soil to grow or spread.

Resurrecting Reform

Beyond ending the civil wars currently roiling the region, the United States must also push forward policies that will help avoid the creation of new failed states and new civil wars—recognizing that both the Sunni terrorists and the Iranians will be doing the opposite in hopes of creating new hosts to infect. This means embracing the cause of political, economic and social reform in the Muslim Middle East that the United States has toyed with for decades, but never made more than a half-hearted commitment.

The political, economic and social grievances that gave rise to the Green Revolution and the Arab Spring have not gone away. They have been temporarily suppressed. They will be back. We don’t know when and we don’t know in what form, but they will undoubtedly be back. And a critical goal of American policy moving forward must be to guard against that day heading it off as best we can by pushing the states of the region to adopt reform, not repression, as the only viable long-term solution.

The United States should not avoid the need for political reform simply because it is hard to accomplish. The Middle East is in such bad shape because it is at the beginning, not the end, of a regional movement demanding political change. The more stridently governments resist reform, the more violence there will be. We can try to put off the inevitable but ignoring the need for real change will mean that change, when it inevitably comes, will be violent, producing new revolutions, failed states, civil wars and other problems for the United States and its allies. We cannot avoid the wider set of underlying economic, political and social problems that were the ultimate cause of the Arab Spring and the civil wars it inadvertently produced. If we are to avoid worse, reform is the only path out.

That is a simple statement and unquestionably the right answer for the states of the region to avoid further civil wars and internal unrest. But it is wicked hard in practice. Having come through the searing events of 2011, many of the Arab regimes that survived have concluded that any reform would only encourage greater demands for change that could easily escalate out of control—producing the revolts, state collapse and civil war that they (and we) fear. They aren’t entirely wrong. Reform that is handled badly—too fast, too slow, too narrow, too wide—can produce exactly that dynamic. No reform at all, however, is a recipe for disaster.

As a final point on the issue of the importance of reform, it is worth noting the exception to the regional rule. Alone among the states of the Muslim Middle East, Tunisia has embraced dramatic reform and begun a difficult process of real democratization. It has already survived multiple crises where it might easily have veered back toward dictatorship and repression (as Egypt unfortunately has). If its transition is successful, it could prove to be a useful example for other states to follow—the first Arab democracy.

That is a potentially transformative role, one that the United States should nurture. The opposite is also true: were Tunisia to fail, it would be taken by many as a sign that political pluralism and free-market economics are impossible in the Muslim Middle East, thus generating renewed support for repression as the only alternative. For both of these reasons, the United States, and the West more broadly, have a huge stake in the success of Tunisia. Even in an era of shrinking foreign aid budgets, Tunisia is a wise investment and potentially our best bet.

Moreover, other small states with the potential to move further down the path of reform—like Morocco and Jordan—could be usefully persuaded to do so with the promise of more generous aid. Again, these are exactly the kind of investments in the future of the Middle East that can only pay off in the long run, but are in fact the only potential solutions for the deep-seated problems of the region that simply cannot be solved by quick fixes.

Reaching Out to Other Great Powers

Although the United States can and should swing the pendulum of American involvement in the region back toward the center, as the Obama Administration has already begun to do, this cannot be the only answer to our problems. Ending the civil wars of the region and pushing the Arab states to embrace the long process of meaningful political, economic and social reform is not going to be easy. Executing and enabling such policies will require real resources, and a commitment maintained over years if not decades. While public opinion polls indicate considerable willingness on the part of the American people to commit resources to the problems of the Middle East, it seems unlikely that this nation will make another massive commitment to the Middle East, say on a par with the commitment it made to Iraq in 2003-2011, anytime soon.

If the United States is no longer able or no longer willing to bear such costs alone, we are going to need to find others to share the burden. Certainly, the Europeans can provide some assistance, especially in the economic realm. But the Europeans now punch well below their weight in all policy spheres and we should not count on too much from them. Some regional states can contribute economic resources and political clout to certain specific projects, like ending the civil war in Syria, but gone are the days when the Saudis would back any American project no matter how disconnected from their own immediate security concerns. Moreover, even though the Saudis embraced (gradual) reform at home under King Abdullah, at the same time they ardently pursued counter-revolutionary policies that stifled reform abroad. Consequently, we should not assume that the region can do this on its own, even with advice, encouragement and pressure from the United States.

For all of these reasons, the United States may have to begin to look to new players on the Middle Eastern scene to help advance these ambitious, but essential, policy objectives. The two obvious candidates are China and India.

At first blush, this idea may seem ludicrous. The Chinese often see themselves as our ultimate rival for global dominance or at least local dominance in East Asia. They often ally with odious Middle Eastern regimes out of venal self-interest. They try to avoid getting involved in the internal affairs of other countries whenever possible and are often unmoved by aggressive behavior by anyone other than the United States. For its part, India has massive internal issues of its own to sort out, has little military capacity, and is locked in a sixty-year old struggle with Muslim Pakistan.

Yet there are other factors that argue entirely in the opposite direction. China and India are two of the fastest industrializing countries in the world, and are increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil (far more so than the United States). Their political systems require continued economic growth and that economic growth is threatened by instability in the oil markets (or just high prices) that can be triggered by instability in the Middle East. Thus, the primary interest of both India and China in the Middle East is the same as America’s primary interest there. Moreover, both are developing power projection capabilities and increasingly looking to protect their interests abroad.

The trick will be to persuade the Chinese and Indians that while they may not care about the internal affairs of the states of the Middle East today, they will in the future—and when they do, they are liable to wish that they had cared about it all along. What is required is to induce Beijing and Delhi to understand that the problems of the region are creating chronic internal instability which is ultimately the greatest threat to the oil exports of the region.

If we are able to do so, we will succeed in turning a major challenge for our grand strategy into a major asset. If the Chinese and Indians (to a lesser extent) insist on seeing the United States as an adversary and are willing to associate with states regardless of their actions—foreign or domestic—this will greatly complicate the ability of the United States to dampen the risk of interstate conflict and to press regional regimes to adopt far-reaching reforms. They will always be able to hide behind the Chinese, getting what they need from Chinese businessmen and using Beijing as a diplomatic and (eventually) military counterweight to the United States. Implementing a grand strategy of enabling reform in the Muslim Middle East will be that much more difficult under these circumstances. However, if we are able to bring the Chinese and Indians around, they would then become our allies in the same initiative.

Imagine the impact of these three great powers working in tandem to discourage foreign aggression and encourage internal reform? Imagine if regional reformers had alternative great power backers (one without the taints we have acquired) to turn to for aid in all its forms? Imagine if would-be troublemakers met a united front of Washington, Beijing and Delhi determined to prevent them from causing mischief? Imagine if local regimes found the champions of both East and West determined to move them down the path of reform—and willing to help them do so?

This recognition creates a basis for mutual understanding. If China and India acknowledge their own need for greater stability in the Middle East to ensure the free flow of oil, but recognize that the region is fragile and can be a trap for foreign great powers, then Chinese and Indian policymakers may be receptive to an arrangement that minimizes great power competition in the Middle East, maximizes cooperation, and possibly even establishes a division of labor in which the United States continues to play a leading military and political role, with economic and diplomatic support from Beijing and Delhi.

Whereas India is the world’s most populous democracy, China itself has made only grudging political reforms—and certainly has not championed political pluralism abroad. Nevertheless, China’s ambivalence about democracy probably won’t be a serious stumbling block to cooperation in promoting internal reform and helping to make that possible across the Middle East. The Chinese have demonstrated a high degree of cynicism when it comes to systems of government elsewhere, showing few reservations about democratization in South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Indonesia, let alone farther afield in Europe, Africa and Latin America. As long as a country is doing whatever it is China wants and needs, Beijing has typically shown itself willing to tolerate political reform.

Even where China opposes efforts to promote democracy, such as in North Korea and Myanmar, its concern is principally with preserving regimes friendly to it and avoiding chaotic transitions that could affect its interests. The kind of gradual, indigenously-driven process of political reform (which may or may not produce true democracy depending on the desires of the people themselves) envisioned in this grand strategy should be acceptable to the Chinese if they come to see it as in their interests because it will ensure long-term stability even if comes at the expense of short-term dislocations.

Persuading China and India to help share the burdens of the Middle East will likely consist of more than just compelling conversation. In particular, a critical element in making China and India our partners in this enterprise will be giving them a role in the Middle East commensurate with their growing strength and aspirations. This is going to be particularly hard for the United States with regard to China, because it is going to mean accepting Beijing as our equal in the geopolitics of the Middle East. Rather than making unilateral decisions after minimal consultation with our regional allies, Washington will have to learn to negotiate common policies with Beijing—and Delhi. It will certainly mean lots of painful coordination with other governments, whose concurrence will often be vital for the sake of the wider partnership if not for cooperation on the specific matter itself. It may mean allowing the Chinese and Indians basing rights in the region, both so that they feel comfortable that they can protect their own interests, and so that they are able to exercise their influence jointly with us. It will probably mean agreeing to do some things Beijing’s way and other things Delhi’s.

All of this would be laborious, frustrating, time-consuming, and even enraging for America’s leaders and diplomats, but the rewards would be well worth the effort. Moreover, they appear increasingly necessary given America’s diminishing willingness to bear the costs of the Middle East on its own.

The Necessity of Long-Term Strategic Focus

I have attempted to cover a lot of ground in this testimony, sketching out the framework of a new American grand strategy for the Middle East. There is a great deal more that would need to be said to explain how these broad approaches could be translated into concrete policies. But such a framework is a necessary starting point both in building such a program and in debating whether it is the right one for the nation. I believe it is, if only because I can think of no other that would better suit our interests in the Middle East, our circumstances, and the tools and resources we have available to us there.

The one critical requirement of this strategy that I fear we may have in inadequate supply is the commitment to see it through. We are an impatient people, especially when it comes to the confounding problems of the Middle East. We have typically sought to fix a problem there, or just fix it-up, and then move on to something we liked more. Unfortunately, the history of our involvement in the region since 1971 has been that every time we have tried this, it has not fixed anything at all, and instead the problem has inevitably come back to bite us later, and require far more effort and resources to address it then. As I have said elsewhere, the Middle East is NOT Las Vegas: what happens there does not stay there.

Nor do its problems admit themselves of quick and easy solutions. It took a long time and a lot of disastrous mistakes (by Arabs, Iranians, Turks, Israelis, Europeans, Americans and many others) to bring the region to its current distressing state of affairs. No American strategy is going to change that quickly. While there are solutions to the problems we face in the Middle East, they require, time, patience and the determination to see them through.

Mr. Chairman and distinguished Senators, our Founding Fathers explicitly created the United States Senate to be the guardians of America’s long-term good. To ensure that at least some segment of the nation’s leaders had the perspective and the ability to fight for what is in the country’s interests beyond tomorrow or even six-months from tomorrow. For that reason, I urge you, as you contemplate U.S. policy toward the Middle East to be the voice of strategic wisdom. To consider how deep the problems of the region have become, and to press for changes in American policy that put in place the long-term shifts that will be needed to actually deal with the problems of the region, rather than merely trying to paper over them until the next, worse crisis engulfs us.

Special thanks to my colleagues Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs for providing valuable commentary on early drafts of this post.

With Prime Minister Netanyahu’s controversial speech behind us, it seems like a good time to consider how the Israelis might actually react to a nuclear deal with Iran. I am still not convinced we will get such a deal—Iran’s latest statements should reinforce everyone’s skepticism—but the negotiations appear to be making enough progress that we should be thinking through the contingencies if we do get one.

Let’s deal with the elephant in the living room first: it is highly unlikely that Israel will mount a military attack against Iran after a nuclear deal has been struck between Iran and the P5+1 (or in the run-up to one.) As I have laid out elsewhere, Israel does not have a good military option against Iran for both military-technical and political reasons. That’s why Israel has uncharacteristically abstained from a strike, despite repeated threats to do so since the late 1990s.

In this case, the political circumstances would be even worse. Consider the context: Iran will have just signed a deal with the United States and the other great powers agreeing to limits on its nuclear program, accepting more intrusive inspections, and reaffirming that it will not try to build a nuclear weapon. If the Israelis were to attack at that point, an already anti-Israeli international climate would almost certainly turn wholeheartedly against them. Who would support Jerusalem? The Germans, who are the “+1” in the P5+1? The Obama administration, which has made the deal the centerpiece of its Middle East policy? The Sunni Arab states? They will quietly applaud from the sidelines but won’t provide any meaningful assistance. So who?

That question is of more than academic interest to the Israelis. If Israel attacks Iran, there is a very real risk that Iran would respond by withdrawing from the deal, withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), evicting the inspectors and announcing that it will acquire nuclear weapons since its own conventional forces and the word of the international community were clearly inadequate to deter an unprovoked Israeli attack. The Iranians will doubtless also demand an end to the sanctions (and/or the imposition of sanctions on Israel), and if that is not forthcoming will set about busting the sanctions. And the problem for the Israelis is that in those circumstances, with the entire world furious at them for committing aggression and destroying a deal that most will see as having been the best way to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, there is likely to be very little will to preserve the sanctions on Iran. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Iran has a better chance to break out of the sanctions cage than this one.

Thus, an Israeli military strike in these circumstances would be unlikely to help prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and regaining its freedom of maneuver. It is more likely to ensure an Iranian nuclear weapon and jeopardize the international containment of Iran.

While this set of problems makes an Israeli military response unlikely, that doesn’t mean that Jerusalem will just roll over and accept the deal. First, I suspect that the Israelis will ramp up their covert campaign against Iran and its nuclear program. More Iranian scientists may get mysteriously assassinated in Tehran. More sensitive Iranian facilities might blow up. More computer viruses might plague Iranian networks. More money might find its way to Iranian democracy activists and ethnic minorities. Of course, even then, the Israelis may show some restraint: the Iranians are said to have greatly improved their own cyberwar capabilities, and even a right-wing Israeli government might not want to provoke a harsh Iranian response that affected Israel’s civilian economy.

Second, I think it pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Israelis will also seek greatly expanded U.S. aid in response to a nuclear deal with Iran. More F-35s, greater funding for Israel’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile and Iron Dome anti-rocket systems, more capable bunker-busting munitions—these all seem like certain Israeli requests. Jerusalem might go after other possibilities previously denied it: re-open the F-22 line to provide them with a few squadrons? Lease one or more American heavy bombers capable of carrying the massive GBU-57 bombs that could penetrate into Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility? Both would be real reaches, but in the aftermath of a deal, Israel may feel a strategic need for such enhanced capabilities and may believe that the United States will be more willing to provide them to secure Jerusalem’s (grudging) acquiescence.

Finally, a nuclear deal with Iran could push Israel to become more aggressive in its own neighborhood—or to take advantage of the situation to do so. The Israelis will doubtless argue that the deal has made them feel less safe, and therefore less willing to take risks on other security matters, particularly developments with the Palestinians, but potentially in Syria and Lebanon as well. (The Israelis are very comfortable with the Egyptian and Jordanian governments and are unlikely to take actions that would undermine them or diminish their cooperation with Israel.) For instance, in the wake of a nuclear deal, Israel may look to clobber Hizballah and/or Hamas in Gaza again to convince them not to mount new attacks against Israel once their old Iranian allies (a strained relationship in the case of Hamas) begin coming out from under the sanctions and possibly flexing their muscles across the region.

It is worth noting that some Israelis may favor such actions out of a genuine belief that this is what is necessary to guarantee their security after what they will likely consider an imperfect Iran deal. Others may do so cynically, using their well-known unhappiness with a deal to justify doing a bunch of things that they believe that the United States and international communities would be loath to condone otherwise.

Two caveats are in order here. First, the results of Israel’s upcoming elections matter. If Netanyahu is able to form a narrow, right-wing coalition, Jerusalem is more likely to amp up its covert campaign against Iran, more likely to demand expanded American military aid (including access to heretofore forbidden items), and more likely to go after their nearby enemies. A national unity government or a left-center coalition is less likely to do so—or perhaps will just do so less ardently. In particular, they are far more likely to concentrate on securing additional American aid and hardware than on provoking Iran directly or going after Hamas and Hizballah.

Finally, I do not raise these issues as reasons to oppose a nuclear deal with Iran. I continue to believe that a deal would be the best outcome for all concerned (including Israel), although I am reserving judgment until I see what the actual agreement looks like and I share some of the concerns that the P5+1 may not get as much as they could or probably should. But whatever I or the Israelis may think, the Obama administration seems committed to this process and I think the great variable—what will seal or scupper the deal—is the unpredictable Ayatollah Khamene’i. If he agrees, we are very likely to have such a deal, and in those circumstances, we need to have thought through all of the different effects that it will produce, including changes in the conduct of our regional allies.

Authors

Special thanks to my colleagues Daniel Byman and Natan Sachs for providing valuable commentary on early drafts of this post.

With Prime Minister Netanyahu’s controversial speech behind us, it seems like a good time to consider how the Israelis might actually react to a nuclear deal with Iran. I am still not convinced we will get such a deal—Iran’s latest statements should reinforce everyone’s skepticism—but the negotiations appear to be making enough progress that we should be thinking through the contingencies if we do get one.

Let’s deal with the elephant in the living room first: it is highly unlikely that Israel will mount a military attack against Iran after a nuclear deal has been struck between Iran and the P5+1 (or in the run-up to one.) As I have laid out elsewhere, Israel does not have a good military option against Iran for both military-technical and political reasons. That’s why Israel has uncharacteristically abstained from a strike, despite repeated threats to do so since the late 1990s.

In this case, the political circumstances would be even worse. Consider the context: Iran will have just signed a deal with the United States and the other great powers agreeing to limits on its nuclear program, accepting more intrusive inspections, and reaffirming that it will not try to build a nuclear weapon. If the Israelis were to attack at that point, an already anti-Israeli international climate would almost certainly turn wholeheartedly against them. Who would support Jerusalem? The Germans, who are the “+1” in the P5+1? The Obama administration, which has made the deal the centerpiece of its Middle East policy? The Sunni Arab states? They will quietly applaud from the sidelines but won’t provide any meaningful assistance. So who?

That question is of more than academic interest to the Israelis. If Israel attacks Iran, there is a very real risk that Iran would respond by withdrawing from the deal, withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), evicting the inspectors and announcing that it will acquire nuclear weapons since its own conventional forces and the word of the international community were clearly inadequate to deter an unprovoked Israeli attack. The Iranians will doubtless also demand an end to the sanctions (and/or the imposition of sanctions on Israel), and if that is not forthcoming will set about busting the sanctions. And the problem for the Israelis is that in those circumstances, with the entire world furious at them for committing aggression and destroying a deal that most will see as having been the best way to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, there is likely to be very little will to preserve the sanctions on Iran. It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Iran has a better chance to break out of the sanctions cage than this one.

Thus, an Israeli military strike in these circumstances would be unlikely to help prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and regaining its freedom of maneuver. It is more likely to ensure an Iranian nuclear weapon and jeopardize the international containment of Iran.

While this set of problems makes an Israeli military response unlikely, that doesn’t mean that Jerusalem will just roll over and accept the deal. First, I suspect that the Israelis will ramp up their covert campaign against Iran and its nuclear program. More Iranian scientists may get mysteriously assassinated in Tehran. More sensitive Iranian facilities might blow up. More computer viruses might plague Iranian networks. More money might find its way to Iranian democracy activists and ethnic minorities. Of course, even then, the Israelis may show some restraint: the Iranians are said to have greatly improved their own cyberwar capabilities, and even a right-wing Israeli government might not want to provoke a harsh Iranian response that affected Israel’s civilian economy.

Second, I think it pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Israelis will also seek greatly expanded U.S. aid in response to a nuclear deal with Iran. More F-35s, greater funding for Israel’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile and Iron Dome anti-rocket systems, more capable bunker-busting munitions—these all seem like certain Israeli requests. Jerusalem might go after other possibilities previously denied it: re-open the F-22 line to provide them with a few squadrons? Lease one or more American heavy bombers capable of carrying the massive GBU-57 bombs that could penetrate into Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility? Both would be real reaches, but in the aftermath of a deal, Israel may feel a strategic need for such enhanced capabilities and may believe that the United States will be more willing to provide them to secure Jerusalem’s (grudging) acquiescence.

Finally, a nuclear deal with Iran could push Israel to become more aggressive in its own neighborhood—or to take advantage of the situation to do so. The Israelis will doubtless argue that the deal has made them feel less safe, and therefore less willing to take risks on other security matters, particularly developments with the Palestinians, but potentially in Syria and Lebanon as well. (The Israelis are very comfortable with the Egyptian and Jordanian governments and are unlikely to take actions that would undermine them or diminish their cooperation with Israel.) For instance, in the wake of a nuclear deal, Israel may look to clobber Hizballah and/or Hamas in Gaza again to convince them not to mount new attacks against Israel once their old Iranian allies (a strained relationship in the case of Hamas) begin coming out from under the sanctions and possibly flexing their muscles across the region.

It is worth noting that some Israelis may favor such actions out of a genuine belief that this is what is necessary to guarantee their security after what they will likely consider an imperfect Iran deal. Others may do so cynically, using their well-known unhappiness with a deal to justify doing a bunch of things that they believe that the United States and international communities would be loath to condone otherwise.

Two caveats are in order here. First, the results of Israel’s upcoming elections matter. If Netanyahu is able to form a narrow, right-wing coalition, Jerusalem is more likely to amp up its covert campaign against Iran, more likely to demand expanded American military aid (including access to heretofore forbidden items), and more likely to go after their nearby enemies. A national unity government or a left-center coalition is less likely to do so—or perhaps will just do so less ardently. In particular, they are far more likely to concentrate on securing additional American aid and hardware than on provoking Iran directly or going after Hamas and Hizballah.

Finally, I do not raise these issues as reasons to oppose a nuclear deal with Iran. I continue to believe that a deal would be the best outcome for all concerned (including Israel), although I am reserving judgment until I see what the actual agreement looks like and I share some of the concerns that the P5+1 may not get as much as they could or probably should. But whatever I or the Israelis may think, the Obama administration seems committed to this process and I think the great variable—what will seal or scupper the deal—is the unpredictable Ayatollah Khamene’i. If he agrees, we are very likely to have such a deal, and in those circumstances, we need to have thought through all of the different effects that it will produce, including changes in the conduct of our regional allies.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a joint meeting of Congress. His address sparked an intense debate among U.S. and Israeli lawmakers over the protocol issues raised by the invitation to speak, which came from the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives without consultation with the Obama White House, as well as the substance of the address — a broadside against Obama’s Iran policy — and its timing during the final days of a closely contested Israeli election.

Brookings scholars weighed in on the debate, through blog posts, op-eds and the media. These include:

Fellow Natan Sachs explained why Netanyahu’s speech was so controversial. "Israelis, by and large, don't like it when their prime minister quarrels with the United States," Sachs told Vox. "For most voters, especially in the core base on the right and I think center right, here's Bibi doing something that opposition leaders cannot do: speak the way he does with his English and this reception from Americans.” Also read Sachs' blog post on the electoral implications of the speech as well as his Haaretz op-ed with recommendations for Israeli and American strategy toward the Iran nuclear talks.

A New York Times editorial examining Netanyahu's speech discussed American public opinion on the Iran nuclear deal, and cited Telhami’s poll results “show[ing] that a clear majority of Americans — including 61 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats — favor an agreement.” Telhami also organized and moderated the annual Sadat Forum earlier this week, featuring a discussion on the Iranian nuclear issue and the Netanyahu speech with Brookings Distinguished Fellow Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Jessica Matthews, and CMEP Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney.

In an op-ed on U.S. News and World Report, Maloney argued that when it comes to a deal with Iran, “The ever-present illusion of a more perfect deal is not worth risking an imperfect, but minimally sufficient, bargain.”

With the prospect of a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 looking increasingly likely and with the caveat that, “as always, Iran’s future behavior is hard to predict because its motives going into the nuclear negotiations are unclear and its decision-making is always opaque,” Senior Fellow Kenneth M. Pollack examined the possible scenarios and offered his thoughts on whether a nuclear deal would likely make Iran more or less aggressive — or neither.

Last week, William Galston, who holds Brookings' Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies, wrote about the implications of Netanyahu’s speech, warning that “[t]he last thing he should want is a negative reception in the United States that fuels Israeli swing voters’ doubts about his capacity to manage Israel’s most important relationship.” And in his Washington Post column last week, Senior Fellow Robert Kagan argued that “there is no doubt that the precedent being set is a bad one” and regretted that “bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a U.S. president’s policies…will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle.”

And finally, for anyone wanting to see what our scholars were tweeting during Netanyahu’s speech, and reaction afterward, here’s a round-up.

Authors

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a joint meeting of Congress. His address sparked an intense debate among U.S. and Israeli lawmakers over the protocol issues raised by the invitation to speak, which came from the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives without consultation with the Obama White House, as well as the substance of the address — a broadside against Obama’s Iran policy — and its timing during the final days of a closely contested Israeli election.

Brookings scholars weighed in on the debate, through blog posts, op-eds and the media. These include:

Fellow Natan Sachs explained why Netanyahu’s speech was so controversial. "Israelis, by and large, don't like it when their prime minister quarrels with the United States," Sachs told Vox. "For most voters, especially in the core base on the right and I think center right, here's Bibi doing something that opposition leaders cannot do: speak the way he does with his English and this reception from Americans.” Also read Sachs' blog post on the electoral implications of the speech as well as his Haaretz op-ed with recommendations for Israeli and American strategy toward the Iran nuclear talks.

A New York Times editorial examining Netanyahu's speech discussed American public opinion on the Iran nuclear deal, and cited Telhami’s poll results “show[ing] that a clear majority of Americans — including 61 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats — favor an agreement.” Telhami also organized and moderated the annual Sadat Forum earlier this week, featuring a discussion on the Iranian nuclear issue and the Netanyahu speech with Brookings Distinguished Fellow Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Jessica Matthews, and CMEP Senior Fellow Suzanne Maloney.

In an op-ed on U.S. News and World Report, Maloney argued that when it comes to a deal with Iran, “The ever-present illusion of a more perfect deal is not worth risking an imperfect, but minimally sufficient, bargain.”

With the prospect of a nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 looking increasingly likely and with the caveat that, “as always, Iran’s future behavior is hard to predict because its motives going into the nuclear negotiations are unclear and its decision-making is always opaque,” Senior Fellow Kenneth M. Pollack examined the possible scenarios and offered his thoughts on whether a nuclear deal would likely make Iran more or less aggressive — or neither.

Last week, William Galston, who holds Brookings' Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies, wrote about the implications of Netanyahu’s speech, warning that “[t]he last thing he should want is a negative reception in the United States that fuels Israeli swing voters’ doubts about his capacity to manage Israel’s most important relationship.” And in his Washington Post column last week, Senior Fellow Robert Kagan argued that “there is no doubt that the precedent being set is a bad one” and regretted that “bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a U.S. president’s policies…will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle.”

And finally, for anyone wanting to see what our scholars were tweeting during Netanyahu’s speech, and reaction afterward, here’s a round-up.

One of the many points of contention between Left and Right over a possible nuclear deal with Tehran concerns how Iran will behave in its aftermath. Opponents of a deal often suggest that Iran is likely to feel both less constrained and more determined to prove its undying revolutionary commitments, and so will become more aggressive—increasing its support for terrorist groups and insurgencies, amping up its efforts to subvert regional governments, and possibly directly threatening some of its regional rivals. The Obama administration, on the other hand, has repeatedly indicated that it believes that a nuclear deal could be the start of a wider rapprochement with Iran, ultimately producing a less fearful and therefore less aggressive Iran. Indeed, administration officials have repeatedly stated that one reason that they are going slow on Syria is that they want to wait till after a nuclear deal when they believe that Iran will be more amenable to a compromise on Syria.

There is a logic to both positions, but my best guess is that neither the fears of the Right nor the hopes of the Left are likely to pan out—at least not fully. As always, Iran’s future behavior is hard to predict because its motives going into the nuclear negotiations are unclear and its decision-making is always opaque. With those important caveats in mind, I thought I would sketch out my own thinking on this issue.

First, Iran has always seemed to fashion discrete policies toward different states of the region. In each case, Iran has a certain set of interests in a country and engages in a policy debate over how to act toward that country—in which Iran’s complicated domestic politics interact with various strategic perspectives to produce a policy toward that country. Because these policies are both derived from Iran’s strategic interests and must run the gauntlet of Iranian internal politicking, they tend to persist over time. The tactics change, but the strategic approach tends to remain constant.

Right now, I think that Iran has a Syria policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Syria. It appears to have an Iraq policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Iraq. And the same for Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. Neither those interests nor those politics appear likely to change much, if at all, as a result of the nuclear deal. I don’t think that the Iranians see any reason to compromise on Syria—or anything else, for that matter—with the United States in response to a nuclear deal. But for the same reasons, I don’t see any reason why Iran would be less restrained in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or anywhere else. I see Iranian actions in those places as being precisely calibrated to what Iran is trying to achieve in those places, which is unlikely to be affected by the nuclear deal one way or the other.

It is also worth noting that across the region, the Iranians seem pretty comfortable with the status quo—largely because that status quo is pretty favorable to them. Their Shi’ite allies are dominant in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. In Syria, the Asad regime remains in power and is making important gains against its opposition with no sign of impending collapse. The Iranians probably feel they could be doing better in Bahrain, but of the countries in play in the region, that’s the only one Iran cares about where Iranians may not believe they are “winning.” So there is no particular reason to believe that Iran is looking to increase its aggressive involvement in any of these states but has been somehow constrained from doing so by the nuclear negotiations.

Moreover, while I can’t prove it, I think there is strong circumstantial evidence that Khamene’i and the Iranian establishment believes it has far more at stake in Iraq and possibly Lebanon than it does in a nuclear deal. They have poured resources into Iraq over the years, which is deeply bound up with Iranian society economically, socially and politically—as well as having constituted a dire security threat in the past. Likewise, Iran’s alliance with Hizballah is part of the bedrock of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy and brings Iran a coveted role in the events of the Levant. Because of Syria’s relationship to both Iraq and Lebanon, it too might be more important to Tehran than a nuclear deal if the Iranian leadership were ever forced to choose between the two. The point I am making here is simply that I cannot see Iran changing its policy in any of these countries because of a nuclear deal because I don’t think that Iran values a nuclear deal as much as it does its positions in these various countries.

Based on his various statements over the years, I think that Khamene’i’s perspective on a nuclear deal is purely transactional. If he agrees to one, it will be solely to get the sanctions removed. I think he has made it clear that this is how he sees a nuclear deal: he is willing to accept certain limits on his nuclear program in return for the removal of the sanctions. Nothing more and nothing less. Again, for that reason, I think it unlikely that he agrees to a wider rapprochement with the United States—whatever Foreign Minister Zarif and possibly President Rouhani may want—but equally unlikely that he feels that he can now take advantage of American disengagement to run the table on us.

There are a few possible exceptions to this last point. I suspect that experts from the Right may be correct that Khamene’i and Iran’s hardliners may want to prove that a nuclear deal does not mean that they have given up their enmity with the United States. If that is the case, they may increase some of their anti-status quo activities in certain selected venues.

Israel is the obvious case in point: Iran may try to convince Hizballah, Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and others to mount attacks on Israel. That’s almost a “freebie” for Iran. Israel is unlikely to retaliate directly against Iran, everyone will know that Tehran is behind the attacks, and since the Netanyahu government has managed to isolate Israel in ways that the Palestinians never could, Tehran will be playing to a popular cause. The problem here is that Iran may not be able to pull the trigger on such a campaign. Hizballah and Hamas are both extremely wary of picking a fight with Israel, as demonstrated by the fact that neither has done so in the face of multiple Israeli provocations. PIJ and other Palestinian proxy groups are weaker than in the past and may have a hard time penetrating Israel’s ever more sophisticated defenses.

Bahrain is another possibility. Because Bahrain is a majority Shi’ite state, whose people have been disenfranchised and oppressed by the regime—and its Saudi allies—it is another arena where Iran may be able to burnish its revolutionary credentials in a relatively popular international cause. But here too, there are limits. Some Bahraini Shi’a clearly accept aid from Iran, but the majority appear to prefer not to. They recognize that the more that they can be dismissed as Iranian agents the harder it is for them to get international pressure on the regime to reform. In addition, Bahrain is a very sensitive issue for the Saudis, and the Iranians have to worry that if they press on Bahrain, the Saudis might push back somewhere else where they are more vulnerable.

A last possibility is Yemen. Iran has few direct stakes in Yemen and Iran's nominal allies, the Houthis, are dominant at the moment. So Iran has little to lose there and a (relatively) powerful ally. But once again, Iran’s ties to the Houthis have been exaggerated, and it is another very sensitive spot for the Saudis.

Consequently, it may prove difficult for Iran to make much mischief in any of these arenas—more difficult than it may be worth for them.

All that said, there is at least one factor that could produce a significant Iranian regional reaction stemming from a nuclear deal, and that is how Saudi Arabia reacts to it. As is well known, the Saudis aren’t exactly fans of a nuclear deal with Iran. Now, I do NOT expect the Saudis to acquire a nuclear weapon of their own in response. That’s kind of silly. The Saudis have had good reasons for not acquiring one all of these years (and the Pakistanis good reasons for not giving it to them). More than that, the optics would be all wrong for the Saudis. Think about it: Iran will have just signed a deal with the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China agreeing never to build a nuclear weapon and accepting limits on its enrichment program to reassure the world that it won’t/can’t get a nuclear weapon. In that context, if Saudi Arabia goes out and buys a bomb from the Pakistanis, suddenly both Riyadh and Islamabad will become the international pariahs. All of the sympathy will swing to Iran, which will be seen as having behaved well, whereas there will be worldwide demands to sanction the Saudis (and the Pakistanis) for doing exactly what Iran had agreed not to do. None of this makes sense for the Saudis.

That said, the Saudis may react in other ways. First off, I expect that soon after a nuclear deal is announced with Iran, the Saudis may announce that they are going to start a nuclear program of their own and build UP to whatever levels Iran is allowed. So if, for instance, Iran is allowed to keep 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity, then I suspect that the Saudis will announce that they are going to acquire 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity. Doing so would be an important warning both to the Iranians (that the Saudis will match their nuclear capabilities at every step) and to the West (that it will have further proliferation in the Middle East if they do not force Iran to live up to its new commitments).

Second, the Saudis may choose to ramp up their support to various Sunni groups fighting Iran’s allies and proxies around the region. Indeed, I actually think this more dangerous than the risk that Iran chooses to do so absent Saudi provocation. Again, the Saudis seem to agree with the Iranians that Iran is “winning” in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. And the Saudis also seem to believe that Iran is making important inroads in Oman and with various Shi’ite communities elsewhere in the Gulf. So while the Iranians may not need to double-down, the Saudis may, and they may choose to do so after a nuclear deal both to signal to the Iranians that they should not take advantage of it to inflict more damage on the “Sunni” side, and in fear that the United States intends to use a nuclear deal with Iran as a “Get Out of the Gulf Free” card. The Gulf states are convinced that is the Obama administration’s intent, and far from accommodating with Tehran as some have feared, the Gulf states are far more likely to get in Tehran’s face to try to deter the Iranians. This last is arguably the greatest danger of a nuclear deal. The Gulf states are not strong enough to take on Iran alone, and if they act provocatively toward Iran, even if intended to deter Iranian aggression, they could easily provoke just such aggression. If the United States is not there to reassure the Gulf states and deter Iran, things could get very ugly.

Authors

One of the many points of contention between Left and Right over a possible nuclear deal with Tehran concerns how Iran will behave in its aftermath. Opponents of a deal often suggest that Iran is likely to feel both less constrained and more determined to prove its undying revolutionary commitments, and so will become more aggressive—increasing its support for terrorist groups and insurgencies, amping up its efforts to subvert regional governments, and possibly directly threatening some of its regional rivals. The Obama administration, on the other hand, has repeatedly indicated that it believes that a nuclear deal could be the start of a wider rapprochement with Iran, ultimately producing a less fearful and therefore less aggressive Iran. Indeed, administration officials have repeatedly stated that one reason that they are going slow on Syria is that they want to wait till after a nuclear deal when they believe that Iran will be more amenable to a compromise on Syria.

There is a logic to both positions, but my best guess is that neither the fears of the Right nor the hopes of the Left are likely to pan out—at least not fully. As always, Iran’s future behavior is hard to predict because its motives going into the nuclear negotiations are unclear and its decision-making is always opaque. With those important caveats in mind, I thought I would sketch out my own thinking on this issue.

First, Iran has always seemed to fashion discrete policies toward different states of the region. In each case, Iran has a certain set of interests in a country and engages in a policy debate over how to act toward that country—in which Iran’s complicated domestic politics interact with various strategic perspectives to produce a policy toward that country. Because these policies are both derived from Iran’s strategic interests and must run the gauntlet of Iranian internal politicking, they tend to persist over time. The tactics change, but the strategic approach tends to remain constant.

Right now, I think that Iran has a Syria policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Syria. It appears to have an Iraq policy based on its interests and its politics as they relate to Iraq. And the same for Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc. Neither those interests nor those politics appear likely to change much, if at all, as a result of the nuclear deal. I don’t think that the Iranians see any reason to compromise on Syria—or anything else, for that matter—with the United States in response to a nuclear deal. But for the same reasons, I don’t see any reason why Iran would be less restrained in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, or anywhere else. I see Iranian actions in those places as being precisely calibrated to what Iran is trying to achieve in those places, which is unlikely to be affected by the nuclear deal one way or the other.

It is also worth noting that across the region, the Iranians seem pretty comfortable with the status quo—largely because that status quo is pretty favorable to them. Their Shi’ite allies are dominant in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. In Syria, the Asad regime remains in power and is making important gains against its opposition with no sign of impending collapse. The Iranians probably feel they could be doing better in Bahrain, but of the countries in play in the region, that’s the only one Iran cares about where Iranians may not believe they are “winning.” So there is no particular reason to believe that Iran is looking to increase its aggressive involvement in any of these states but has been somehow constrained from doing so by the nuclear negotiations.

Moreover, while I can’t prove it, I think there is strong circumstantial evidence that Khamene’i and the Iranian establishment believes it has far more at stake in Iraq and possibly Lebanon than it does in a nuclear deal. They have poured resources into Iraq over the years, which is deeply bound up with Iranian society economically, socially and politically—as well as having constituted a dire security threat in the past. Likewise, Iran’s alliance with Hizballah is part of the bedrock of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy and brings Iran a coveted role in the events of the Levant. Because of Syria’s relationship to both Iraq and Lebanon, it too might be more important to Tehran than a nuclear deal if the Iranian leadership were ever forced to choose between the two. The point I am making here is simply that I cannot see Iran changing its policy in any of these countries because of a nuclear deal because I don’t think that Iran values a nuclear deal as much as it does its positions in these various countries.

Based on his various statements over the years, I think that Khamene’i’s perspective on a nuclear deal is purely transactional. If he agrees to one, it will be solely to get the sanctions removed. I think he has made it clear that this is how he sees a nuclear deal: he is willing to accept certain limits on his nuclear program in return for the removal of the sanctions. Nothing more and nothing less. Again, for that reason, I think it unlikely that he agrees to a wider rapprochement with the United States—whatever Foreign Minister Zarif and possibly President Rouhani may want—but equally unlikely that he feels that he can now take advantage of American disengagement to run the table on us.

There are a few possible exceptions to this last point. I suspect that experts from the Right may be correct that Khamene’i and Iran’s hardliners may want to prove that a nuclear deal does not mean that they have given up their enmity with the United States. If that is the case, they may increase some of their anti-status quo activities in certain selected venues.

Israel is the obvious case in point: Iran may try to convince Hizballah, Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and others to mount attacks on Israel. That’s almost a “freebie” for Iran. Israel is unlikely to retaliate directly against Iran, everyone will know that Tehran is behind the attacks, and since the Netanyahu government has managed to isolate Israel in ways that the Palestinians never could, Tehran will be playing to a popular cause. The problem here is that Iran may not be able to pull the trigger on such a campaign. Hizballah and Hamas are both extremely wary of picking a fight with Israel, as demonstrated by the fact that neither has done so in the face of multiple Israeli provocations. PIJ and other Palestinian proxy groups are weaker than in the past and may have a hard time penetrating Israel’s ever more sophisticated defenses.

Bahrain is another possibility. Because Bahrain is a majority Shi’ite state, whose people have been disenfranchised and oppressed by the regime—and its Saudi allies—it is another arena where Iran may be able to burnish its revolutionary credentials in a relatively popular international cause. But here too, there are limits. Some Bahraini Shi’a clearly accept aid from Iran, but the majority appear to prefer not to. They recognize that the more that they can be dismissed as Iranian agents the harder it is for them to get international pressure on the regime to reform. In addition, Bahrain is a very sensitive issue for the Saudis, and the Iranians have to worry that if they press on Bahrain, the Saudis might push back somewhere else where they are more vulnerable.

A last possibility is Yemen. Iran has few direct stakes in Yemen and Iran's nominal allies, the Houthis, are dominant at the moment. So Iran has little to lose there and a (relatively) powerful ally. But once again, Iran’s ties to the Houthis have been exaggerated, and it is another very sensitive spot for the Saudis.

Consequently, it may prove difficult for Iran to make much mischief in any of these arenas—more difficult than it may be worth for them.

All that said, there is at least one factor that could produce a significant Iranian regional reaction stemming from a nuclear deal, and that is how Saudi Arabia reacts to it. As is well known, the Saudis aren’t exactly fans of a nuclear deal with Iran. Now, I do NOT expect the Saudis to acquire a nuclear weapon of their own in response. That’s kind of silly. The Saudis have had good reasons for not acquiring one all of these years (and the Pakistanis good reasons for not giving it to them). More than that, the optics would be all wrong for the Saudis. Think about it: Iran will have just signed a deal with the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China agreeing never to build a nuclear weapon and accepting limits on its enrichment program to reassure the world that it won’t/can’t get a nuclear weapon. In that context, if Saudi Arabia goes out and buys a bomb from the Pakistanis, suddenly both Riyadh and Islamabad will become the international pariahs. All of the sympathy will swing to Iran, which will be seen as having behaved well, whereas there will be worldwide demands to sanction the Saudis (and the Pakistanis) for doing exactly what Iran had agreed not to do. None of this makes sense for the Saudis.

That said, the Saudis may react in other ways. First off, I expect that soon after a nuclear deal is announced with Iran, the Saudis may announce that they are going to start a nuclear program of their own and build UP to whatever levels Iran is allowed. So if, for instance, Iran is allowed to keep 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity, then I suspect that the Saudis will announce that they are going to acquire 6,500 first-generation centrifuges and 150 kg of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent purity. Doing so would be an important warning both to the Iranians (that the Saudis will match their nuclear capabilities at every step) and to the West (that it will have further proliferation in the Middle East if they do not force Iran to live up to its new commitments).

Second, the Saudis may choose to ramp up their support to various Sunni groups fighting Iran’s allies and proxies around the region. Indeed, I actually think this more dangerous than the risk that Iran chooses to do so absent Saudi provocation. Again, the Saudis seem to agree with the Iranians that Iran is “winning” in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. And the Saudis also seem to believe that Iran is making important inroads in Oman and with various Shi’ite communities elsewhere in the Gulf. So while the Iranians may not need to double-down, the Saudis may, and they may choose to do so after a nuclear deal both to signal to the Iranians that they should not take advantage of it to inflict more damage on the “Sunni” side, and in fear that the United States intends to use a nuclear deal with Iran as a “Get Out of the Gulf Free” card. The Gulf states are convinced that is the Obama administration’s intent, and far from accommodating with Tehran as some have feared, the Gulf states are far more likely to get in Tehran’s face to try to deter the Iranians. This last is arguably the greatest danger of a nuclear deal. The Gulf states are not strong enough to take on Iran alone, and if they act provocatively toward Iran, even if intended to deter Iranian aggression, they could easily provoke just such aggression. If the United States is not there to reassure the Gulf states and deter Iran, things could get very ugly.